
Class J2>3_515' 

CorpgktN"^. /H/__ 

COJEWtlGHT DEPOSIT, 



ii 



OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR 

THE EYES OF FAITH 

THE MAN OF POWER 

IN THE VALLEY OF DECISION 

THE MEN OF THE GOSPELS 

THE LURE OF BOOKS 

ATHANASIUS : THE HERO 

THE THEOLOGY OF A PREACHER 

THE QUEST FOR WONDER, AND OTHER PHILO- 
SOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 

THE LITTLE OLD LADY 

THE CLEAN SWORD 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROTESTANT REFOR- 
MATION 

FLYING OVER LONDON 



The Opinions of 
John Clearfield 



By 
LYNN HAROLD HOUGH 




THE ABINGDON PRESS 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI 






Copyright, 1921, by 
LYNN HAROLD HOUGH 



OCT 26 1921 



Printed in the United States of America 

0)C[.A624992 



«>4 



to my friend 
Martin Luther Haggerty 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Man of Books and Men 9 

Getting on All Sides of Things 13 

The Explosive Mind of Nietzsche 18 

The Virility of Ralph Connor 23 

The Empty Rooms 28 

Poise and Passion 33 

Capturing Our Rarest Moods 36 

The Man Who Expects to be Surprised ... 40 

By An Unknown Disciple 44 

The Reading of Poetry 49 

The Danger of Losing Your Way 52 

Books as Tools and Books as Friends 57 

Among the Crowds of Passing Books 61 

A Commanding Voice 67 

Types of Political Leaders 71 

The Future of American Politics 76 

Off for the Summer 80 

The Human Touch 85 

The Art of Being Alone 88 

The Man of the Hour 92 

The Man Who is Lost in a Point of View. 97 



8 CONTENTS 



PAGE 



"Preaching and Paganism" 102 

The United States and the World 107 

The League of Nations 113 

A Notable Preacher 118 

With John Clearfield at Sea 122 

Literary Hospitality 126 

Dr. Kelman and America 130 

Social Unrest in England and America. . . 135 

The Power of Hope 139 

Two Dangers and Two Opportunities 143 

Victory and Peace 148 

The Speech Which We Brought From 
England 152 

The Middle West 157 

Contemporary Poetry 160 

Concerning Abraham LincCln 163 

The International View 166 

John Clearfield at Chautauqua 170 

"Tusitala" 174 

The Magic of Good Books 178 

The Practical Dreamer 183 



THE MAN OF BOOKS AND MEN 

1 FIRST met John Clearfield about seven 
years ago. He was a man who sug- 
gested possibilities in the adventure of friend- 
ship from the first. His sharp, clean-cut 
face, his deep, quiet eyes, with their sudden 
flashing of hidden fire, his rich and many- 
toned voice, which seemed to have a response 
for every sort of feeling — all these attracted 
me. But when he began to talk, in that 
quick and decisive fashion which his friends 
know so well, I began to sense the real qual- 
ity of the man. He saw everything with his 
own eyes, and he was always thinking in a 
fearless and individual way. That first talk 
led to others, and it was not long until the 
habit of going over things together had de- 
veloped. In the years which have passed 
since then we have been in constant touch. 
Sometimes I have his letters with their vivid 
and penetrating and interpreting phrases, 
sometimes we talk together by the hour. 
Long ago I nicknamed him the "Man of 
Books and Men" because he has such a deep 

9 



10 THE OPINIONS OF 

and understanding contact both with books 
and people. But he never writes. He seems 
to feel no debt to the world at large except 
the faithful discharge of the duties of his 
profession in which he has made such a genuine 
and notable place for himself. 

One day we were out walking together. I 
had been urging him to write, using every 
argument of which I could think. He was 
entirely irresponsive, smiling in a whimsical 
and half-tantalizing way he has, all the while. 
At last I turned sharply upon him. 

"If you won't break into print for yourself, 
I'm going to break into print for you," I 
declared. 

He laughed outright at that. Then he said, 
with laughter still playing in his eyes: "You 
think you'll add being a Boswell to your 
other activities, do you?" 

He thought for a moment. Then he went 
on: "All right. Try it out. I haven't the 
slightest objection, if you don't use my name, 
and if I don't have to read what you write." 

We both laughed at this and he added: 
"I never could talk naturally to you again if 
I had the sense of an invisible audience. So 
I won't read what you write and I won't see 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 11 

it, and we will never speak of the matter 
again." 

It was a curious sort of an understanding. 
But we both have lived up to it. At first I 
thought he was a little less free in his talk, 
but that soon wore off, and there is not the 
slightest lack of the old spontaneous quality 
to our exchange of opinions. I have kept 
jotting down notes of his talk, and now I 
am going to live up to my word. As he won't 
break into print for himself, I am going to 
break into print for him. 

Perhaps I ought to add a word or two in 
further explanation. It may seem strange 
that a busy and successful lawyer should have 
time to delve into so many fields. The truth 
is that Clearfield has the most amazing health. 
And he has declared that long reading and 
thinking in other fields simply leave his mind 
clearer for his own work. I have caught him 
engrossed with some bit of scholastic philos- 
ophy or some remote period of history the 
night before he was to try an important case. 
When I expressed surprise, he looked at me 
with a twinkle in his eye, and said, "I'm just 
clearing the cobwebs out of my mind." 

The reader may be interested in knowing 



n THE OPINIONS OF 

that John Clearfield's father was a distin- 
guished preacher, with a scholar's habits of 
mind, and that his mother was a musician of 
that rare and sensitive spirit which makes 
real interpretation possible. She never played 
in public, but her son used to say that she 
set the home to music, and that there was 
always a rhythm even about the way she set 
about household tasks. These things do not 
account for Clearfield. But they do throw 
light upon his character and his ways. 

I am really sorry that he refuses to read 
any of these articles and that I do not even 
dare to mention them in his presence. But 
at any rate I am hoping that a great many 
people will come to know him, and to sense 
the quality and significance of his opinions. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 13 



GETTING ON ALL SIDES OF THINGS 

THE Man of Books and Men was obvi- 
ously preoccupied. He answered every 
remark which I made in monosyllables. His 
eyes had a far-away look. I tried one subject 
after another, and I quite failed to rouse him. 
At length I picked up my hat and started 
toward the door, remarking as I put my hand 
on the knob: "I'll drop in to-morrow if you 
are sure you will not be entertaining invisible 
friends." 

John Clearfield was at my side in a bound. 
He seized my arm and forced me into a chair. 

"Now, sit there for a minute," he said, 
"until I am ready to talk." 

His moods are familiar to me and I waited 
patiently. In perhaps five minutes he looked 
up, his face still bearing marks of the con- 
centration with which he had been thinking. 

"Do you remember the line, 'Struck by the 
splendor of a sudden thought'?" he asked. 
"Well, it happened just before you came in, 
and I had to work it out a little. Now I am 
ready to talk." 



14 THE OPINIONS OF 

"And what was the sudden thought?" I 
asked. 

John Clearfield looked out at the window for 
a moment. Then he picked Gilbert Chester- 
ton's little volume on the Life of Robert 
Browning from the table. 

"It was really Chesterton who did it," he 
began. "I read this life of Browning when it 
first came out, and I have been throjigh it 
three times since. There is more actual com- 
prehension of the man and the poet here than 
I have seen anywhere else. Half an hour 
ago I picked up the book. Some remark made 
by Chesterton sent me back to *The Ring and 
the Book.' Then I fell to thinking. You 
know the poem, arid we have often talked 
about it together. But I have never felt 
before as I did after turning over the familiar 
pages for a half hour what the plan of the 
poem means. Why did Browning tell the 
same sordid story of an ItaHan murder from 
twelve different points of view? It was not 
merely to show how cleverly he could reveal 
the ways in which different types of people 
see the same thing. Browning is always too 
much in earnest about art and about life to 
be contented with mere cleverness. It came 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 15 

to me like a flash that all these people, even 
those who are most mistaken, do help you to 
get at the truth of the whole story. It is not 
until you have seen Pompilia and the rest 
against the background of all these people 
and their ways and their thoughts, that you 
begin to apprehend the truth about the whole 
situation. Even the most cynical misinterpre- 
tation helps you to understand. At the mo- 
ment when you came in I was summing it all 
up in a sort of conclusion. And the conclusion 
went something like this: You have never 
really seen a thing until you have seen all 
sides of it, even the sides which do not exist." 

I pulled up the conversation at that. 

"Wait," I cried, "until I am sure that I 
know what you mean." 

He laughed a little and then said, "I mean 
that you understand a man better after you 
know the sort of lies his enemies tell about 
him. There is always something revealing 
about a lie." 

I saw that Clearfield was about to continue, 
and again I called a halt. 

"You mean that any point of view about 
anything is worth studying because nobody 
would think of it if, in some confused, dis- 



16 THE OPINIONS OF 

torted way, it was not related to the truth?" 
I asked. 

"That is a part of it," he replied. "As a 
matter of fact, we are all the while tempted 
to close the doors on further thought. We 
conclude that we have exhausted a subject or 
a person, and we make no attempt to go 
farther. There are always more significant 
things to know. People have a touch of the 
infinite in them, and subjects have pretty 
nearly endless relations. The man with the 
mind which is really alive keeps going all 
about people and subjects and getting more 
light upon them. And at last he learns some 
things from the very way they stand in the 
shadows when they are misinterpreted." 

"But what's the use of all this?" I asked. 
"Why not be contented with a simple, direct 
view and let it go at that?" 

John Clearfield stood above me with a quick 
movement which meant that he was really 
stirred. 

"This is the reason," he said. "If you are 
not all the while getting fresh views of things, 
you lose your sense of the views you have. 
The only way to keep a hold on the simplest 
truth is to keep seeing it in more and more 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 17 

relations, and the only way to keep a great 
relation to people is to be discovering new 
things about them all the while." 

"But what if there is nothing new to dis- 
cover?" I asked. 

"There always is," replied Clearfield with 
assurance. "Personality is the only thing 
which you cannot exhaust." 



18 THE OPINIONS OF 



THE EXPLOSIVE MIND OF NIETZSCHE 

JOHN CLEARFIELD was holding a little 
book in his hand. I peered over his 
shoulder and discovered that it was Maxi- 
milian A. Mugee's discussion of Friedrich 
Nietzsche in the series called The People's 
Books. The Man of Books and Men was just 
ready to break out into speech. It was evident 
that without the slightest intention of doing 
it I had timed my arrival with precise rela- 
tion to his mood and his welcome. 

"I've been running over a wonderfully use- 
ful little summary of the teaching of Nietzsche," 
said John. "It is written with intimate knowl- 
edge and with a real attempt to understand 
in some sympathetic fashion what Nietzsche 
was about. I used to go to Zarathustra when 
I had a particularly difficult case on hand and 
needed to have my brain keyed up to its high- 
est pitch. There was something about the 
very intellectual and moral audacity of it all 
which quickened my mind in amazing fashion. 
The more angry I became at some of the 
burning and blazing bits of scornful speech 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 19 

the more I felt something like quicksilver 
running through my own veins. I wouldn't 
want Nietzsche as food. But I find him a 
splendid tonic." 

I walked over to the shelves of books just 
beyond where John was sitting and pulled 
out a well-worn copy of Thus Spake Zarathus- 
tra. While I was fingering its pages John 
went on talking. 

"In a way Nietzsche is one of the very few 
thoroughgoing opponents Christianity has ever 
met. Most men have accepted a part of the 
thing they opposed. Spencer could not be- 
lieve in a personal God, but he imported Chris- 
tian ethics into his system and made his whole 
evolutionary philosophy find its crown here. 
Nietzsche had the daring of a dauntless logic, 
and he was willing to go the whole length of 
his maddest conclusions. All this is seen in 
one passage in The Anti-Christ, 'I condemn 
Christianity. I bring against the Christian 
Church the most terrible accusation ever 
voiced. It is to me the greatest of all imag- 
inable corruptions. It has brought about the 
ultimate corruption. It has left nothing un- 
contaminated by its depravity; it has made 
every valuable thing worthless, every truth a 



20 THE OPINIONS OF 

lie, every honest impulse a baseness of soul.' 
Nietzsche believed in the struggle for existence. 
He believed in the survival of the fittest. He 
believed that the struggle must go on relent- 
lessly and remorselessly and that it must lead 
to the entire elimination of the unfit. He 
believed that Christianity was a method by 
which the unfit were enabled to survive. He 
believed that its whole spirit of compassion 
and of tenderness toward the weak was filling 
the world with undesirable citizens. It was a 
slave morality. It was a conspiracy of the 
weak against the strong. It was the dastardly 
method by which those who had no right 
to be alive attempted to gain possession of 
the earth." 

Just here I interrupted: "Are you attack- 
ing or defending?" 

"I'm doing neither," declared John, "I am 
describing.'* 

"Your description sounds a good deal like 
a subtle advocacy," I remarked. 

John was every bit the keen lawyer as he 
replied : 

"Your opponent should never be able to 
put his own case more strongly than you 
have put it for him. You don't have to mis- 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 21 

interpret Nietzsche in order to get a verdict 
against him at last." 

I leaned back in my chair and said: "All 
right. Go to it." 

"The will to power is a most interesting 
part of Nietzsche's philosophy In his hard- 
and-fast mechanical system the will to power 
will find it difficult to find a logical home. 
But even if it is a sort of illegitimate son of 
his thinking, it does have immense power to 
rouse and to quicken all the men who turn 
to Nietzsche as a guide. Here you have an 
emphasis on creative energy and masterful 
capacity and dominant leadership. You always 
feel a certain vigor coming from the very 
thought of personal masterfulness as Nietzsche 
interprets it. The superman has his grave 
limitations. He is really a sort of super 
beast. But at least he is a man of action. 
At least he is not caught in the clutter of 
things. At least he is not the slave of the 
system in which he lives. Of course Nietzsche 
had no right to him. Only a personal philos- 
ophy gives a real place for even powerful 
selfish personaKty. But in a world where 
things have gotten into the saddle and are 
riding mankind it is refreshing to have the 



22 THE OPINIONS OF 

call for vigor of will sounded so loudly. The 
fact is tliat if Nietzsche could only have seen 
that every man is potentially a superman in 
the making it would have saved him from 
most of his errors. If he had seen that Chris- 
tianity is not the survival of the unfit, but 
the supremest power to make men fit to sur- 
vive it would have changed his thought of a 
thousand relationships. If he had seen that 
the will to power is only a step in the evolu- 
tion which reaches its full meaning in the will 
to serve and the will to sacrifice, vast vistas 
would have opened before his mind. As it 
was his mind staggered under the weight of 
his own philosophy. Clearly, if there is a 
superman, Nietzsche did not belong to the 
class. According to his own standards he was 
not fit to survive." 

We sat in silence for a little while. Then 
John spoke one more sentence: 

"The man who tried to be God after all 
only made it more clear that it is not by being 
God but by trusting God that you can get 
safely through the world." 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 23 



THE VIRILITY OF RALPH CONNOR 

JOHN CLEARFIELD was just turning the 
last page of a book as I entered the room. 
I looked over his shoulder and promptly dis- 
covered that he had been reading the last 
volume from the prolific pen of that Winnipeg 
minister whom the world of letters knows as 
Ralph Connor. My friend was on his feet in 
an instant. After our greetings were over 
he took a turn or two about the room. Then 
he turned to me with a question: 

"Have you read The Sky Pilot in No Man's 
Land?" 

'T carried it off with me on my last week- 
end trip, and when I got home the last chapter 
had been read," I replied. 

The Man of Books and Men did not ask 
for any comment. He was in a mood when 
he wanted to talk, and he leaned back in his 
chair in a way which I quite understood. 
So I sat silently beside him waiting until he 
found his first sentence. 

"It was in 1899," he began. *T was in the 
East at the time. One night at dinner I heard 



24 THE OPINIONS OF 

some remark about a new Canadian author 
who had a trick of making people and their 
experiences live again before your eyes. The 
next day I bought a copy of Black Rock. 
It was like a breath of clear mountain air. 
And what tremendous people there were in 
it. They had downright passions. They 
knew how to love. They knew how to hate. 
And right while you watched them they were 
held by the human grip of real religion in a 
way that filled you with astonishment. From 
that day I knew that Ralph Connor had 
something for me. Then came The Sky Pilot. 
One cannot forget Gwen's Canyon. There 
was wonderfully delicate art here and a 
power to delineate simple and sincere human 
devotion which quite held one's heart. Book 
followed book rapidly enough now. Some- 
times it was young life in a Canadian home. 
Sometimes it was the career of young people 
finding their way in life. The wide West 
was in it all. The mountains hovered over it. 
Artificial conventions were made to seem petty 
in the presence of the direct and powerful 
people one met in these books of strong men. 
There were literary weaknesses enough. Some- 
times the sentiment became cloyingly sweet. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 25 

There was little of that probing insight into 
the subtler processes of the soul which is the 
glory of much contemporary fiction. One had 
a way of meeting the same character with a 
different name attached as one passed through 
Connor's books. But all this and more was 
forgiven. For without question this whole- 
hearted Canadian did have something real and 
potent and mastering which you cared so 
much about that you thought very little of 
the qualities which his work lacked. Most of 
his books celebrated the wedlock of red blood 
and religion and very happy you were to 
attend these nuptials." 

Clearfield walked over to a shelf of books 
while he was talking and picked up The Major. 

"Here is Connor's first war book," he said. 
"You get a graphic picture of a Canada which 
had no dream of the world tragedy which was 
impending. You see the various attitudes of 
men as the danger approaches. You see the 
response of an aroused people when the crisis 
comes. But you do not go to France. It is 
The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land which takes 
you over the ocean and into the actual fighting. 
The book is full of touches which come from 
first-hand contact. Even a man who had 



26 THE OPINIONS OF 

read little of the war literature would know 
a good deal about what this war was like by 
the time he finished the book. There is a fine 
upstanding manliness about it. There is an 
atmosphere of grit and endurance and daunt- 
less courage. There is a passionate love for 
Canada, a deep loyalty to the Empire, a hearty 
appreciation of the Allies, and a warm and 
generous enthusiasm for America. You watch 
the young minister at war as he comes to 
understand what are the needs of the men, 
and as he learns how to minister to them. 
There is quick movement, there is the dash 
of swift and terrible adventure. There is the 
cloud of grief black with bereavement, but 
always with a golden fiash of hope from be- 
yond the cloud. There is the bloom of a fair 
flower of human love, and this with the sud- 
denness and stormy energy which character- 
izes so many experiences in a time of war. 
There is the hovering consciousness of an un- 
seen Presence mighty and strong, tender and 
rich in wonderful companionship, the presence 
of the God who watches over the fighters in 
the war-torn world. But most of all, there 
is the characteristic note of Connor — the note 
of a gripping and masterful virility. Strong 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 27 

men move through the pages of this book. 
Their strength stands out as if it were a suit 
of armor. The book makes you understand 
the meaning and the necessity of such strength 
of character as it portrays. It is a book of 
virility triumphant. It is a virihty conse- 
crated to the service of Christ. The man 
who represents the invisible captain is him- 
self a captain of courage, the peer of any of 
the sturdy men with whom he serves." 

The Man of Books and Men waited for a 
moment after he had spoken so swiftly and 
so rapidly. Then he said: 

*Tt is wonderfully good to escape from the 
complexities of the introspective novel once and 
a while, and to read tales as direct and as 
simple in their assumptions and their actions as 
are those which Connor writes. There is a 
finer and a more manly spirit in Canada and in 
America because one Canadian minister knows 
how to make his love of courageous manliness 
live in his tales of the Northwest." 



28 THE OPINIONS OF 



THE EMPTY ROOMS 

THE other night after dinner I dropped in 
upon my friend John Clearfield. I 
found him deep in a comfortable chair in his 
library. He was in a brown study. For a 
while I moved about among his books, leaving 
him in the company of his busy thoughts. 
At length he looked up: 

"Can you tell me the most impressive evi- 
dence of contemporary inefficiency?" he asked. 

"The comparison of the skill with which we 
produce things with our bungling methods of 
dealing with persons," I replied after a mo- 
ment of thought. 

John kindled at once. 

"You are more than half right about that," 
he conceded. "When we give as much atten- 
tion to the production of human character as 
we now give to the production of luxuries we 
will transform the life of the world. We 
are capable when we deal with things. We 
move with futility and incapacity when we 
deal with persons." 

Clearfield sat quite still as he turned the 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 29 

thought over in his mind. Then he con- 
tinued. 

''That is not what I was thinking about, 
though the two things do have a connection. 
I was thinking that the typical modern man 
lives in a house with many empty rooms. He 
owns his house. But he never really uses it 
to its full capacity. And sometimes the rooms 
he never enters are really the most important 
rooms of all." 

'T know a good many people who are over- 
flowing their houses and want bigger ones more 
than they want anything else," I observed. 

"You know perfectly well that I am talking 
about the houses you can't burn up," inter- 
rupted John with some acid in his voice. 
"You don't usually find it necessary to be so 
desperately literal." 

"I only thought you would talk better if 
you felt near to the typical contemporary 
mind," J replied so gently that John threat- 
ened to throw a paper weight at me. 

"It's a big house the Master of life gives to 
every growing boy," said Clearfield soberly 
when we had finished chaffing. "It has no 
end of wonderful rooms in it. And it really 
seems a pity to have so many men die with- 



30 THE OPINIONS OF 

out ever entering rooms where they might 
find such stimulus and pleasure and out of 
which they might go with such power to serve 
the world." 

I was idly penciling pictures of large houses 
on some white paper I had picked up from the 
library table of my friend. He stood looking 
over my shoulder and smiling whimsically. 
Then he reached over and deftly turned one 
of my houses into a church by the trick of 
giving it a steeple and a row of Gothic windows. 

"Every house ought to have a church in it," 
said John. "At least every house ought to 
have a private chapel. And that's one of the 
rooms a good many men never enter. It 
came to me with a queer shock the other day 
that the room of prayer in the lives of masses 
of modern men is all full of dust and cob- 
webs with never the mark of human feet. If 
there's Somebody waiting there to meet you, 
he waits a long time. It must be terribly dull 
and lonely. You pass a good many lives in 
the night. Once and a while you see a beau- 
tiful light. And as you look closely you know 
that it is shining through the exquisite win- 
dows of the room of prayer. A man misses a 
lot who leaves that room empty." 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 31 

Clearfield walked over in front of the open 
fire and gazed steadily at the red embers. 

"I met a man the other day," he said, "who 
told me that he perfectly hated to be alone. 
He was all the while bustling about, keeping 
in the midst of noise and confusion, in per- 
petual fear that some time he might be left 
with nobody but himself in the neighborhood. 
He kept the room of meditation tightly locked. 
The worst of it was you could not tell him 
what he was missing. He would not have 
understood a word you said." 

"You have to take them young," I inter- 
jected. 

"Right you are," said Clearfield. "But just 
the same it's a sad sort of experience to watch 
a lonely man — living in a big house he has 
never learned to use." 

Few men know more various types than my 
friend John, and as he went on to picture the 
men he had known who never entered the 
room of love, who had lost their capacity for 
affection in hard, self -centered activity; as he 
spoke of the men who never entered the room 
of study and whose mental horizon became 
smaller with every year; as he spoke of the 
men who never enter the room of radiant 



32 THE OPINIONS OF 

ideals and so live lives dull gray and unin- 
spired, I began to share his own acute per- 
ception of how much a man may miss as he 
goes through the world. 

"I went by a house the other night where 
every room was lighted. It was a big house. 
Some sort of party was in progress. And 
out of every window brightness was shining. 
That's what a man's life ought to be like — a 
house with no empty rooms." 

A little later I said "Good night," and as 
I walked away my own mind seemed warmed 
and brightened by my friend's picture of the 
house with bright light shining from every 
room. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 33 



POISE AND PASSION 

A LITTLE group of men had gathered 
around John Clearfield in a corner of 
the lounge in his favorite club. As I entered 
the room I recognized the president of a big 
corporation, a well-known judge, and a pro- 
fessor of history in one of our universities. 
The captain of industry was speaking as I 
came up to the group. 

"There are no two ways about it, Clearfield," 
were the first words I heard. "We have got 
to do something stern and unhesitating. And 
we have got to do it right away. The radicals 
think they are in the saddle, and they will 
dash over the precipice with the whole coun- 
try if we don't stop them." 

At the moment a leader widely appreciated 
for his social passion joined the group. He 
overheard the last words which had been 
spoken and broke in at once, putting his hand 
on the shoulder of the man of big business 
who was one of his close friends. 

"There you go again," he said with a rather 
serious twinkle in his eye, "seeing red as usual. 



34 THE OPINIONS OF 

If men like you don't watch out they will get 
so excited that they will produce the very 
conditions which they fear." 

The judge looked up at this. "Now you've 
said something," he declared. "The great need 
of the hour is poise. We are in danger of 
being ruined by the intensity of our feelings. 
In an hour of nation-wide passion, the man of 
poise is the one safe man." 

"Providing he isn't a helpless man," inter- 
rupted the professor of history. 'Tassion often 
gets a hearing while poise is rejected and 
ignored. It was Luther, and not Erasmus, who 
changed the current of modern history." 

John Clearfield had been listening with 
every faculty alert. I always enjoy watching 
the fashion in which he listens when he is 
really interested in what is being said. Now 
he spoke. 

"Perhaps you are all right," he said, "and 
perhaps if you put everything you say to- 
gether the way through the confusion will 
begin to be seen. How about the man with 
passionate poise as the man to pilot us to 
safer waters? If a man is as steady as a ju- 
dicial mind can make him, and as full of pas- 
sion as a deep and sympathetic understanding 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 35 

of the issues can lead him to be, he will have 
the magnetism of a leader and the dependable- 
ness of a judge." (This with a gleam in his 
eye as he looked toward the man of the bench.) 
He waited the fraction of a minute. Then he 
said, "The man with passion and without 
poise is often influential and always dangerous. 
The man with poise and without passion is 
safe and ineffective. The man of passionate 
poise can capture the imagination of men and 
lead them to a better day." 



36 THE OPINIONS OF 



CAPTURING OUR RAREST MOODS 

THERE were times when John Clearfield's 
face was wonderfully good to look upon. 
When a great idea got possession of him, and 
his whole personality was tingling with the 
power of it, his face had a way of positively 
glowing. "It's as if you hung a lantern inside 
him," said one of his friends. "He becomes 
positively incandescent." I used to sit and 
watch Clearfield at such a time, half for- 
getting what he was saying, while the play 
of light on his face worked its fine magic, like 
an artist putting the last secret of charm into 
a masterpiece. Once when the very glory of 
his enthusiasm had transfigured his whole 
countenance, gleaming in his eyes, flushing in 
a sort of rosy light upon his cheeks, I inter- 
rupted his flow of speech: 

"O John," I cried, "if you could say it as 
you look it, your words would be immortal." 

"And if I could keep looking it, I could say 
it without words," he flashed back, almost be- 
fore the words were out of my mouth. 

"You make me think of one of Mrs. Whar- 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 37 

ton's characters," I replied, "of whom it is 
said that her face in its carvings as you looked 
at it in repose, suggested her rarest mood." 

"And that is the problem of life," said the 
Man of Books and Men. "You have done the 
great and masterful and glorious thing, when 
you have captured your rarest mood." 

We walked along in silence for a while after 
that. I was thinking of the common faces, and 
the dull faces, and the wicked faces, which I 
had seen illuminated by some swift and reveal- 
ing mood of love or hope or aspiration. The 
vision of all these people good and bad, strong 
and weak, mentally nimble and slow of mind, 
capturing the rapturous strength of their rarest 
mood, was like an apocalypse of hope. In a 
moment John Clearfield was speaking again. 

"I have been going over the Gospels lately," 
he was saying, "to try to find the secret of 
Jesus' immediate grip upon men. And I think 
I have found it. He made men feel that the 
mood which was so fine and high that they had 
never dared to take it seriously, was really a reve- 
lation of the deepest meaning of their lives. He 
had a way of catching a man with a great thought, 
and then saying in effect: *My friend, this is 
actually you. How dare you be anything differ- 



38 THE OPINIONS OF 

ent, or anything less?' And so he went about 
with a fine spiritual audacity, making men be- 
lieve in the validity of their rarest moods." 

Clearfield's train of thought had taken me on 
board by this time, and I found myself saying: 
"And I suppose he often produced that rare mood, 
and then gave men courage to be loyal to it." 

My friend nodded approvingly at that. 
"Often he did create the mood," he said, "but 
he always made it rise up as from the depths 
of a man's own life. He never brought it as 
something wonderful from the outside. The 
thing that gave men courage was this feeling 
that the mood belonged to them, that the seed 
of it was in their own lives. If he revealed 
to a man his worst self and made him hate 
it, he revealed to that same man his best self, 
and showed him how to be loyal to it. So he 
made men more humble than they had ever 
been, and he made them more joyously hope- 
ful than they had ever dared to be." 

"A good many people have learned that 
secret from him," I ventured now. "Phillips 
Brooks knew it. All his preaching was a 
declaration of independence in the name of 
the best moods of his hearers. Mrs. Maud 
Ballington Booth knows it. I heard her speak 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 39 

to fifteen hundred prisoners in a big peni- 
tentiary one day. She seemed an incarnate 
challenge, calling those men to believe in hopes 
they had buried, and to go back to dreams of 
manhood they had turned from in despair. 
I have listened to quiet preachers in little 
churches who knew it. And all their preach- 
ing glowed with the surprise and the gladness 
of it. They put a new meaning into the old 
phrase justification by faith." 

I was watching John Clearfield now with 
an arrested intent gaze. It was as if he were 
seeing a sunrise beyond my gaze, and his 
face had caught the splendor of it. He stood 
thus for a little while, and I waited for the 
words which I knew would come. At length 
he turned to me smiling whimsically. "There 
is no hunting like it, is there.^" he said. "It's 
really big game you are after. And that is just 
what the adventure of life means, taking all the 
risks and going forth to capture your highest 
moods." In a moment his voice softened, and 
he spoke with that simple sincerity which al- 
ways gripped me. "It's a big thing to have a 
Guide who knows all the habits of the game." 

As I walked home that night I was still 
thinking of the light upon my friend's face. 



40 THE OPINIONS OF 

THE MAN WHO EXPECTS TO BE 
SURPRISED 

JOHN CLEARFIELD was in high good 
humor. He was moving about his library, 
sorting out papers, replacing books in their 
proper shelves, and gayly whistling all the 
while. I sat watching him and drinking in 
the contagion of his high spirits. After a little 
he flung himself into a chair beside me. 

"Do you want to know what it is all about .f*" 
he asked with a gleam of fun in his eye. 

"Go on with your dissertation," I replied. 
"Only let me name it first. It is to be called 
The Psychology of a Whistle.' " 

The Man of Books and Men sent forth one 
more series of joyously whistled notes. Then 
he began to talk. 

"It's Henri Bergson," he said. "You see, 
I was in just the right mood last night, and I 
went through his Creative Evolution, reading 
every one of the passages which I had marked 
when I first read the book. This time I didn't 
pay so much attention to the reasoning. I 
just drank in the mood. It was like a new 
declaration of independence of the human 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 41 

spirit. It set quicksilver moving in my veins. 
I went to bed feeling that the big things are 
all to come. Life hasn't worn out. The hu- 
man spirit hasn't come to an end of its re- 
sources. Men are full of creative energy. 
There are glorious possibilities everywhere. 
And you simply cannot tell what is going to 
happen next." 

He paused quite out of breath. Then he 
turned toward me in his quick engaging way, 
and went on. 

"When finally I went to sleep the spell of it 
was still upon me. I dreamed that I made a new 
world with seven moons revolving round it." 

He laughed a little, but sobered instantly. 

"The dream was all right at the heart of 
it," he insisted. "We rea ly can make a new 
world if we try hard enough." 

I broke in upon him here long enough to 
quote: 

"Beat down yon beetling mountain 

And raise yon jutting cape. 
A world is on the anvil, 

Now smite it into shape. 
Whence comes that iron music 

Whose sound is heard afar? 
The hammers of the world-smiths 

Are beating out a star." 



42 THE OPINIONS OF 

"Yes, that's exactly the mood," he assented. 
"And the lack of that mood is what's the 
matter with the world. We have lost con- 
fidence. We think the great things have hap- 
pened. We do not expect to be surprised. 
Even the war has left multitudes of people 
completely sluggish. They do not really be- 
lieve in reconstruction. They think that after 
a little flurry everything will settle down to be 
just as it has been. They have no mounting 
dreams. They have no climbing hopes. They 
do not sense at all the great creative impulses 
which are abroad in the world now, and which 
are always potential in the human heart." 

We were silent for a moment after this out- 
burst. Then Clearfield took up the thread of 
his thought. 

"The nineteenth century was the big ma- 
chine age. Even the mind was seen as the 
last expression of the machine idea. Every- 
body thought in the terms of wheels. And 
the spirit of the living creature got ground up 
in the wheels. We lost the sense of deep per- 
sonal initiative. We became sluggish at the 
center of our lives. Our thinkers were effective 
in classification. They quite lost the power of 
inspiration. And life began to get dull and 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 43 

gray. Then came Bergson and men of his 
type. They made plenty of mistakes. But 
they got hold of one tremendous thing. They 
renewed our belief in life. They showed us 
that the world is not exhausted. They taught 
us to believe in the future. They brought into 
existence the type of man who expects to be 
surprised." 

John Clearfield turned over the pages of the 
copy of Bergson's Creative Evolution which 
was in his hand. Then he said very seriously, 
"The hope of the world is the man who expects 
the unexpected." 



44 THE OPINIONS OF 



BY AN UNKNOWN DISCIPLE 

LATE Good Friday afternoon I dropped 
into John Clearfield's study. I found 
him turning over the pages of a new book of 
which I had seen some newspaper notices, but 
upon which my own eyes had not yet fallen. It 
was that fresh telling of the story of the life of 
Jesus By An Unknown Disciple. I dropped into 
an easy chair on the other side of a table, picked 
up the announcement of that new weekly, the 
Review, and was running over its promises, when 
John laid down his book and spoke : 

"I always read some life of Christ when the 
Lenten season comes around," he said. "Last 
year it was that discerning and stirring little 
book. The Jesus of History, by T. R. Glover. 
On two successive years it was David Smith's 
curiously vivid book, The Days of His Flesh. 
You will remember that the London Times 
called it definitely the life of Christ for our 
time. This year I have read this little book 
By An Unknown Disciple." 

The Man of Books and Men leaned back in 
his chair fingering the pages of the volume. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 45 

"The man who wrote this book is a practical 
craftsman," he said. "He had written many 
a page before he laid his hand to this task. 
And if I am not mistaken this is far from being 
the first book which he has published. There 
is deft and understanding and effective work- 
manship on every page. Then the book has 
an atmosphere all of its own. All the while 
you see Jesus against a wonderfully well drawn 
background. The author of the book knew the 
period. And he was master of no end of small 
and intimate matters which lend that air of 
reality to a book which is an almost priceless 
asset." 

I put forth my hand for the book and in a 
moment was going through it, picking out an 
effective sentence here and there. 

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," remarked 
John. "You ought to get the impact of the 
whole of it in consecutive reading. I read the 
book at one sitting. It doesn't tire you. From 
start to finish it holds your interest. The man 
who wrote it cared a great deal about the 
Master and he was wonderfully eager to make 
him real to other people. The Unknown Dis- 
ciple is the possessor of a daring mind. He 
thinks things out for himself. And he has 



46 THE OPINIONS OF 

many a fresh and curious bit of interpretation. 
Even when you do not agree with him, you 
have to do some thinking for yourself, and so 
you come to see the Master in clearer and 
sharper perspective." 

I closed the book obediently while Clear- 
field talked on, resisting the temptation to tell 
him that he did not want me to read sentences 
from it simply because he wanted to talk about 
it himself. He caught the telltale gleam in 
my eyes, however, and reading my thoughts 
with his usual readiness, he stopped to say: 

"You wonder how you are going to get a 
completely fresh impression of the book if I 
keep talking about it, don't you? Well, you 
will. I'll get you to be so eager to prove that I 
haven't seen all there is in the book that you'll 
bring twice your usual amount of attention to 
it, and so you will really read it." 

"That was really a rather terrible reply to 
a remark which I did not make," I interrupted. 
John smiled with a little edge of irony on his 
teeth, and then hurried on. 

"The man who wrote this book loved people. 
He knew them, too. And when he talks about 
them you see them. You will not forget his 
picture of Mary Magdalene. He has a feeling 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 47 

for the past, and he makes you feel how the 
shadow of other days fell upon the twelve and 
their Master. He has a feeling for nature. 
And you feel the quality of the day or the 
night as you follow him through the pages of 
the book." 

"You have said almost everything about the 
book except what I want most to know," I 
broke in long enough to say. "What about 
the central figure? What about the portrait 
of Jesus?" 

John was silent for a little while. He had a 
sort of finely delicate reverence when he spoke 
of the Master which always appealed to me. 
At length he spoke again: 

"Well," he said, "it is really a splendidly 
wrought out picture of a part of the life of 
the Man of the Gospels. Perhaps I can put 
it in this way: When you have finished this 
book, you are sure to love Jesus, but I am not 
at all clear that it would occur to you to wor- 
ship him. When you have finished the Gospels 
themselves you not only love the Master but 
you feel that you must give him worship as 
well as devotion. This book is a delightfully 
graphic portrayal of a real part of the life of 
Christ. But there are deep and marvelous 



48 THE OPINIONS OF 

aspects of his experience which it does not 
touch. I hke books of this sort for what they 
do. Then I go to some other place to find 
what they have not been able to give me." 

"And where would you go in this case.'^" 
I asked. 

John smiled as he replied: "Why not go to 
the four Gospels themselves? After all, the 
best service of a book like this is to sharpen 
your appreciation when you go back to the 
New Testament." 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 49 



THE READING OF POETRY 

JOHN CLEARFIELD was seated deep in 
a big and comfortable chair in his library 
with a volume of poems by Nicholas Vachel 
Lindsay in his hand. 

"One of these days I want to tell you a 
number of convictions I hold regarding Vachel 
Lindsay," he said as I threw myself into a 
chair on the other side of the big fireplace. 

"Eventually — why not now?" I asked. 

"Because I want to talk about something 
else to-night," replied the Man of Books and 
Men. "I want to talk about poetry." 

He mused for a little while and then he began: 

"The other afternoon I heard Dr. Walter 
Leaf talk about Persian poetry. The fact that 
this very powerful banker and distinguished 
Homeric scholar had taken time to get into 
Persian poetry interested me immensely. But 
I came away feeling that I would be willing 
to let the typical busy man in America pass 
by Persian poetry if he would only pay a little 
more attention to English poetry." 

John was warming to his theme. 



50 THE OPINIONS OF 

"Do you know," he said, "I visited an An- 
nual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church the other day. I strolled into the room 
where there was a fairly large collection of 
books on sale. It was a good selection too. 
I was surprised and pleased at many of the 
works which I found on the big table. But 
one thing puzzled me. And it did not please 
me at all. There was almost no poetry to be 
found on the long table full of books. There 
were a couple of war anthologies. There was 
a volume of poems by Henry van Dyke. There 
was a book of Robert Service's unconventional 
verse. And that was practically all. Does it 
mean that all the radiant idealism, all the 
rich and versatile human sympathy, all the 
gripping and living phrases of contemporary 
verse have no particular appeal to the typical 
contemporary minister .f^" 

Without waiting for a reply, Clearfield 
dashed on. 

"The other night I was at a dinner of a 
little group of lawyers. I chanced to mention 
Robert Frost. Only one man at the table knew 
anything about him. Only one man had read 
Master's Spoon River Anthology, though all 
had heard of it. Not a man of them had read 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 51 

Masefield's ^Everlasting Mercy/ One knew the 
poems of Alfred Noyes fairly well. I was the 
only man of the group who had gone much 
beyond 'General William Booth Enters Into 
Heaven' with Vachel Lindsay." 

We sat by the fire while gleams of slow- 
burning driftwood played with curious fanci- 
ful colors before our eyes. I looked over at 
John and watched the glow upon his face. 
The fire light had something to do with that 
glow, but it came from a fire within as well 
as from a fire without. He was speaking very 
quietly and simply now. 

"Men need the poets," he said. "They 
need them more than they know." Then he 
changed a word in a recent vivid rime and 
quoted : 

"A verse can split the sky in two and let 
the face of God shine through." 

He was looking intently into the fire as if 
he could see wonderful lights in the blazing 
embers. 

"There are other faces too," he said — "faces 
of men and women and little children. We 
have never seen all of life until we have seen 
it through the poets' eyes." 



52 THE OPINIONS OF 



THE DANGER OF LOSING YOUR WAY 

I FOUND John Clearfield and Judge Clayton 
in the midst of a hot discussion the other 
night. They were sitting in Clearfield's library, 
and in their preoccupation scarcely noticed 
my entrance. The Judge was saying: 

"That's just the trouble with you political 
idealists. You are always expecting too much 
of the people. The truth of the matter is that 
the great issues must be decided for them. 
The ordinary man is not capable of thinking 
his way through the intricacies of a really 
complex problem. He must be taught to 
follow wise leadership." 

"And how will he be able to tell what leader- 
ship is really wise.^^" John flashed back in an 
instant. The Judge smiled at the neatness of 
the question. 

"Come! Come! Clearfield," cried the Judge, 
"don't try any of your jury tricks with me. 
You know perfectly well that a man can have 
a shrewd practical insight which tells him 
which of two men is really trying to give him 
helpful advice, and is really able to give it. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 53 

without himself being able to follow all the 
involved steps of a diflScult argument." 

"What becomes of democracy in your coun- 
try of docile sheep led by wise shepherds?'* 
asked the Man of Books and Men. "Don't 
you really belong back in the eighteenth cen- 
tury in the age of benevolent despots?" 

The Judge moved a little uneasily in his 
chair. 

"Of course you don't change hard facts by 
disagreeable comparisons," he said at length. 
"In an intricate and bewildering situation like 
that which has followed the war, the simple 
truth is that men are almost certain to lose 
their way, unless you can get them to go back 
to the habit of letting men of experience and 
of tried leadership guide them through the 
maze in which they find themselves." 

"Would you suggest President Lowell or 
Senator Lodge as the guide?" queried John. 
I chuckled a little too audibly at this and the 
Judge turned with a little flash of malice in 
his eye. "It's easy enough for you to main- 
tain your delightful optimism in a theological 
chair," he observed. "Come and sit on the 
bench with me for a few weeks and then see 
if you are so ready to trust the mob." 



54 THE OPINIONS OF 

Clearfield was standing between us now. "I 
know what you want to say to the Judge. So 
I'll be impolite and say it. Your honor," he 
continued sententiously, "my client desires me 
to affirm that you sit on the bench judging a 
few people in one age, while he sits on a bench 
judging all the people of all the ages. That's 
what it means to be a teacher of history." We 
all laughed at that. Then it became evident 
that the Man of Books and Men had the floor 
and that he intended to keep it for a while. 

"It's a great thing to save people from 
making mistakes," he began, "but when you 
save them by holding them in an eternal 
childhood, when you save them by robbing 
them of the opportunity for real development, 
when you crush their personality in order to 
maintain your even scheme of order, when 
you enslave their minds in order to secure 
good ways of life, the price which you pay is 
too great. And it is an impossible price. You 
are simply preparing the way for an uprising 
which will overthrow all your carefully erected 
edifice." 

Judge Clayton was about to interrupt, but 
Clearfield hun-ied on: 

"Really, Judge, you have unconsciously ut- 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 55 

tered the most tremendous argument for men- 
tal and moral education. It is true that people 
are in the greatest danger of losing their way. 
It is true that it is the easiest thing in the 
world to make mistakes. That means that in 
a republic you must train every voter to think 
clearly and closely and honestly about public 
questions. It means that you must diffuse 
that kind of ethical education which gives 
men candor and caution and courage. It 
means that democracy is never safe unless 
particular democrats, the majority of them, 
are men who can be depended upon. It means 
that you must put the gravest responsibilities 
upon everyday men, and then that you must 
train them to be capable of meeting them and 
worthy of meeting them. To say that some 
one else must do the thinking for them is a 
counsel of despair. They must be stimulated. 
They must be encouraged. The whole structure 
of life must be made such that it is feasible 
for them to develop into the fullest capacity 
for functioning in relation to life's gravest and 
most serious problems. We are not to be a 
nation of sheep. We are to be a nation of 
citizens." 

Judge Clayton looked at his watch as John 



5Q THE OPINIONS OF 

came to the end of his trenchant outburst. 
Then he looked at John and me with a twinkle 
in his eye. 

"The jury seems carried quite away by your 
eloquence, Clearfield," he said. "I don't be- 
lieve that any instructions from the court will 
have very much effect." 

In a moment the Judge had gone from us, 
in his stately fashion, taking out of the room a 
subtle sense of gracious charm as he departed. 

"Dear old Tory," said John as we listened 
to the sound of the Judge's feet on the pave- 
ment outside. "The old day had some sort of 
justification in being able to produce men as 
fine as he. But for all that his face is turned 
toward the past. And he has not seen the 
sunrise on the eastern hills." 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 57 



BOOKS AS TOOLS AND BOOKS 
AS FRIENDS 

WE had been silent for some time. As 
a matter of fact, my friendship with 
John Clearfield was quite as remarkable for 
its silences as for its speech. And I profoundly 
regret my inability to report any of these 
pregnant silences, when our companionship was 
deep and real and our friendship was ripening 
all the while. 

This particular evening, however, the silence 
was the prelude to an animated discussion on 
the part of my friend. He had been spending 
a good deal of time with a very brilliant young 
physician, the range of whose humanistic in- 
terests amazed him. He came in once and 
again after spending an evening with his new 
friend bubbling over with enthusiasm. "He 
is a man of the most genuine scientific spirit," 
he used to say, "and at the same time he is a 
born bookman. Books are a real part of his 
life. They are bone of his bone and flesh of 
his flesh. And to watch his mind playing with 
the thoughts of his favorite poets and throwing 



58 THE OPINIONS OF 

out quick, keen phrases about them is a 
delight/' 

After our long silence John turned about in 
a sharp, decisive way which his friends all 
knew well. 

"I have been thinking about that young 
Dr. Tilton," he said. "I think now that I 
have discovered his secret." 

At once I leaned back in my chair in an 
attitude of expectancy. There was no mood in 
which I enjoyed John more than that of 
analyzing people and following the trail of 
their psychological processes. 

"Multitudes of men have large libraries with 
which they never become at home," said my 
friend. "They all the while give you the 
feeling that they are entertaining guests a little 
above them in social station, and that they are 
not quite at ease. Then there are no end of 
people who regard books as a carpenter regards 
his hammer, his plane, and his saw. Books are 
useful tools. But they do not arouse affection. 
One would never think of writing a lyric ex- 
pressing one's devotion to an ax. One would 
not write a love song addressed to a collection 
of nails. And there are all too many people 
who never get past the entirely utilitarian view 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 59 

of books. They are tools, but they are not 
friends. Now Dr. Tilton represents another 
type. He knows how to use books as tools. 
He is an alert young physician and his col- 
leagues tell me that he has unusual technical 
mastery of his materials. But while he knows 
how to use books as he might use a hoe or a 
spade that does not exhaust his relation to 
them. He has whole ranges of friendships 
with books. Some are just pleasant acquaint- 
ances. He has met them in a charming and 
informal way and he rather hopes that he will 
see them again. Some are good chums. He 
has taken them with him on no end of journeys. 
They have shared some of his most difficult 
and dangerous experiences. Some of them 
went with him through the war. He knows 
he can count on them. They are as steady 
and as faithful as a man's most intimate 
friends ought to be. Some he loves with a 
dim and wistful adoration. They seem remote 
in their splendid beauty and yet they allure 
him and they summon him. Some he loves 
with an abiding passion because there have 
been golden moments when they have revealed 
to him the mighty secrets by which he lives. 
They have opened their heart to him, there- 



60 THE OPINIONS OF 

fore he loves them. So he has a social world 
of the most varied types and the richest and 
most diversified interest among his books. The 
professional attitude is all forgotten. The 
utilitarian attitude is brushed aside. His book 
friends are among the best friends he has in 
all the world.'' 

Clearfield looked at me shrewdly for a mo- 
ment. Then he said: "Of course a university 
must teach men how to use books as tools. 
But it fails of its richest contribution to their 
lives if it does not teach them how to make 
friends with books. Oxford has done that 
generation after generation. I wonder — " 

He let the sentence trail off into nothing, 
but the alert look was still in his eyes. I knew 
that he was not thinking of Oxford. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 61 



AMONG THE CROWDS OF PASSING 
BOOKS 

JOHN CLEARFIELD was standing at a 
table on which he had placed two piles 
of books. 

"Going! Going! Gone!" he cried merrily as 
I entered. 

"What in the world are you doing.'^" I asked 
as I surveyed his flushed face and looked upon 
the table full of volumes which he had taken 
from the shelves. 

"I am a judge and a jury," said John, "and 
I have tried and decided one hundred cases 
this morning." 

By this time I was beginning to examine the 
books on the table. 

"Don't mix them up," said the Man of 
Books and Men, sternly. "This pile to your 
right consists of books which have been ac- 
quitted. They are to go back to my shelves 
again. The books on your left have been 
found guilty of intellectual vagrancy. They 
have gotten into my library under false pre- 
tenses. And here they are claiming a perfectly 



62 THE OPINIONS OF 

good home and all the while they are without 
visible means of support. I have sentenced 
every one of them this morning, and now they 
are to be taken away to pay the penalty the 
law attaches to their offense." 

The books on the left hand included a num- 
ber of best sellers. There were some which had 
quickly caught the popular fancy. There were 
some which many people had taken very 
seriously. But the sharp, clear judgment of 
Clearfield had decided against them all. And 
away they were to go. I moved around to 
look at the group of books on the right. Some 
of them were books any person of ordinary 
discernment would have known to possess 
permanent value. Some were books which by 
some particular quality had caught the ad- 
miring allegiance of John Clearfield. If he 
liked a book he liked it, and that was all there 
was to be said about it. I was particularly 
interested in a little bundle of books published 
during the war which he had decided to keep. 
I made some comment about them, and this 
set my friend to talking: 

"Three novels published in England during 
the war have really made a place for them- 
selves in my mind," he began. "First, there 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 63 

was Mr. Britling. When I had finished it, I 
was not sure that Mr. BritHng had seen it 
through, but I was sure that I had seen through 
Mr. Brithng. A man's soul is spread out as 
the sensitive surface upon which the war is 
to make its impression, and you see it all, 
every mark clear and indelible. It is a great 
study of a father, a poor study of a husband, 
and no study at all when it comes to really 
telling what friendship can mean in a time of 
war. Then came The Tree of Heaven. If Mr. 
Wells had told about the effect of the war upon 
a man. Miss Sinclair told about the effect of 
the war upon a family. There is a wonderful 
study of childhood in the book. You get 
amazing inside glimpses of the meaning of 
this little collection of human lives. Very 
sharp and very fine instruments Miss Sinclair 
uses, and the result is art of a very high order. 
The last hundred pages of the book move at 
a lofty height of understanding passion. At 
first you have a notable family without a cause. 
When they find a cause they are transfigured. 
And as you read you know that the thing 
happened not to a family alone, but to a na- 
tion. The third English war novel which 
gripped me was Sonia. It has a hero, and there 



64 THE OPINIONS OF 

are a number of powerful men, but there is no 
heroine. The men are all bigger than the 
women in the crisis. You live over again the 
experiences of school and university, and Ox- 
ford exerts its never-ending charm in these 
pages. You move out into the hard glittering 
life of a society which mistook motion for en- 
joyment and extravagance for gayety. Then the 
war comes. And with its sudden sharp and 
unescapable demand the soul of fineness emerges 
and you see the true England which had been 
hidden in the smoke and incense of its own 
prosperity. To read these three books is to 
have a memorable series of experiences. They 
do not tell all the truth. But they do tell you 
some things you can never forget." 

By this time I had made my way into the 
little pile of books and was holding one of 
them in my hand. 

"I see you have kept some volumes of per- 
sonal experience," I said. "Here is Donald 
Hankey's Student in Arms." 

John put forth his hand for the volume I 
had lifted from the table. "Yes, I have both 
the Student Books by Hankey," he said. "I 
will want to go back to them again and again. 
Hankey found the jewel in the midst of the 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 65 

mire. And when he died his own face was 
bright with the joy of the discovery. We 
cannot forget him. And that young man whose 
father preaches in New Jersey, and who kept 
his dreams and his insights in the midst of all 
the terror/, and found himself anew in the 
tumult and the pain — one must go back to his 
simple human little books once and again. 
Coningsby Dawson has said some things in 
Carry On and Living Bayonets which show 
the eyes of youth clear and certain in the 
midst of all the horrors of war. There's a 
young fellow on the Pacific Coast whose in- 
sight has been quickened by his days in France. 
There are interesting stories about Bill Stidger's 
experiences over there. I met him in a Y. M. 
C. A. Hut not far from the Front. I saw then 
that he was a wonderfully vital chap. But his 
little book, Soldier Silhouettes, surprised me. 
He brushes aside the incidental so easily. He 
finds the little blooming flower with such a 
sure instinct. He is such a curious combina- 
tion of red blood and idealism. A good many 
people went to France without seeing what 
Bill Stidger saw. But that is because they 
went without Bill Stidger's eyes." 

Now I started to say something about a 



66 THE OPINIONS OF 

whole group of books. And I have only be- 
gun to talk about them when my space is 
used up. I'll have to leave it at this. When 
we got into the heart of the pile, I found that 
the important books were all there. And John 
Clearfield did have remarkably trenchant things 
to say about them. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 67 



A COMMANDING VOICE 

"T'VE heard your ministerf cried John 
JL Clearfield, as he threw himself into a 
chair in my study the other Sunday after- 
noon. Curiously enough, he had not been in 
Evanston on a Sunday since the arrival of 
Dr. Ernest F. Tittle, with the mark of war 
heavy upon his life, and his words tense with 
qiiiet, deep social passion. Sitting opposite my 
friend I waited for him to go on. I had been 
looking forward with no little relish to the 
day when he would feel the strength and the 
momentum of the personality of our new leader. 
John smiled a little as he looked across at 
me, reading my thought. "Do you know I 
was almost afraid to hear him.?" he said. 
"During the war Dr. Tittle preached once in 
the City Temple in London. Last summer 
once and again I met Londoners who remem- 
bered that sermon. I ran into people who had 
heard him in the university town where he 
preached in Ohio, and in the capital of his 
State where he won such a notable hearing. 
All that I heard made me feel that I was fairly 
sure to expect too much." 



68 THE OPINIONS OF 

John stopped a minute. Then he let the 
whole depth of his feelings flash in his eyes. 

"But, man," he said, "y<^u never gave me 
a notion of what this morning would be like. 
Before he uttered a word Dr. Tittle made me 
want to listen. Personality fairly exhales from 
him. Then his voice is full of richness, and 
color, and capacity to interpret all his moods. 
And where did he ever learn to use the English 
language? Great quantities of words must be 
lying all about him as he speaks, and with a 
sure, deft instinct, he selects words of force, 
and vital energy, and with cutting edge, and 
words with luminous power. His phrases come 
with a fresh vigor and often with genuine 
distinction. His mind is a great storehouse. 
Literary and historical references make you 
feel that he moves about the ages and among 
the minds of men with a firm, sure step. And 
it is all done with such naturalness that you 
scarcely realize in what ways of varied erudition 
you are being guided. There is the glow of 
humor, and the flash of the quick blade of 
irony. And all the while there is a splendidly 
human quality. You are having a wonderful 
time meeting a mind. You are having a finer 
time meeting a man." 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 69 

"When you do surrender you capitulate like 
a gentleman," I observed. John turned on me 
a little impatiently. 

"Capitulate! who wouldn't capitulate.^" he 
exclaimed. "I haven't spent most of my life 
reading and thinking and studying and com- 
paring without being ready for this sort of 
experience when it comes. One does not have 
too many mornings like this. The world is 
full of words — but to-day I heard a voice." 

He walked back and forth for a little while. 
Then he spoke a bit softly. 

"But, best of all, the man's message is bigger 
than the man. There is simple, deep sincerity. 
There is profound and moving passion. There 
is the fire of a quenchless devotion to the ideals 
of Jesus. There is unhesitating commitment to 
his moral and spiritual lordship. There is 
readiness to pay a costly price to make brother- 
hood real in the world. The best thing Dr. 
Tittle did for me was to make me forget the 
man in his message." 

We sat silent for a while. Then I found that 
John Clearfield was repeating softly his favorite 
lines from Arnold's "Rugby Chapel." After 
that he said: "He is young yet. What a 
moral and spiritual adventure life is to such 



70 THE OPINIONS OF 

a man. And what doors open before the men 
and women who hear him. Take good care 
of yourselves and of him, my friend." 

And then as quickly as he had come John 
Clearfield had slipped away. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 71 



TYPES OF POLITICAL LEADERS 

THE train going East was crowded. I had 
bought my ticket and had secured my 
Pullman reservations several days before, how- 
ever, and so I had nothing to fear. Then the 
man who was to sleep above me soon took 
himself off to the smoker, and so I had the 
section practically to myself. The porter 
placed a table for me. I got out my little 
Corona, and soon its keys were ticking merrily 
and I was working quite as if I had been in 
my own study. By dinner time there were 
several good hours of work behind me, and I 
felt ready to be human and friendly, if the 
train chanced to contain a friend. It was 
with entire delight, therefore, that in one of 
the cars through which I passed on my way 
to the diner I found John Clearfield, just 
emerging from a book which he had been read- 
ing. In a few minutes we were seated opposite 
each other in the dining car, dinner ordered, 
and ready for talk. 

It was only a few days after the death of 
Colonel Roosevelt and soon the conversation 



72 THE OPINIONS OF 

turned upon him. My lawyer friend summed 
up his career, in sentences as telling and 
trenchant as one expects from him. There was 
admiration, and critical insight, and a real 
apprehension of the deeper meaning of American 
life in what he said. Then there came a quick 
turn in the conversation and John Clearfield 
began to talk about political life in America. 
I have been thinking a good deal since about 
what he said, and I am inclined to take it 
very seriously. 

"American political parties have always 
built themselves about the conflict between two 
ideas," said my friend. "On the one hand, 
there is the idea that we ought to have a 
firmer central authority. That has been the 
basic principle of Alexander Hamilton and of 
all his successors. On the other hand, there 
is the idea that the individual man and the 
individual state ought to be kept to the front. 
This has been in some form the basic idea of 
all the successors of Thomas Jefferson." 

Just here the soup was served. The train gave 
a sudden lurch and John Clearfield narrowly 
escaped an application of hot, thick fluid to his 
freshly pressed coat. A deft movement averted 
the danger, however, and he continued: 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 73 

"The curious thing about the poHtical de- 
velopment of the country after the Civil 
War was the more and more complete organ- 
ization of the party for its own sake, and not 
for the sake of the principles it avowed. Now, 
the type of man whose whole activity was 
based upon the ambition to keep in politics 
became ubiquitous. Political exploitation of the 
country was taken almost as a matter of course. 
Over against the corrupt politician arose a man 
of protest. He was a man of brains. He was 
a man of character. He became a political 
independent. Carl Schurz is a good repre- 
sentative of the type. Everybody admired him. 
And everybody respected him. But at length 
he made a sad and disillusioning discovery. 
The political bosses all liked him. They liked 
him because he was so respectable and so 
harmless. He never seriously thwarted their 
plans. He was a picturesque and noble, but 
a sadly ineffective figure. This was the situa- 
tion in America when a certain young New 
Yorker began to make himself felt in the Em- 
pire State. The crisis in his career came when 
he tried ineffectually to prevent the nomina- 
tion of Blaine for the Presidency. He went 
away to a Western ranch to think the matter 



74 THE OPINIONS OF 

out. He saw, on the one hand, the machine 
poKtician, who was exploiting the country. 
He saw, on the other, the helpless independent, 
incorruptible, and ineffective. He did not want 
to play the part of either. He made up his 
mind to make an experiment. He would get 
into the game just as the machine politicians 
got into it. He would be a part of the big 
machine. But he would play the game for his 
country, and not for himself. He would bend 
the machine to the purposes of patriotism. 
He would be as shrewd as the most conscience- 
less politician. He would be as incorruptible 
as the sternest independent." 

Clearfield was silent for a moment. He 
smiled amiably at a steak which had just 
been served. Then he went on. 

"Something interesting has been happening in 
American politics ever since that decision. It 
explains Roosevelt's career. It explains the 
political bad company he sometimes kept. It 
explains the tremendous impact of his prac- 
tical political idealism upon American life. 
He played the game with infinite skill. But 
he always played it for the good of the country." 

Clearfield was every inch the keen, practical 
lawyer as he continued his analysis: 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 75 

"Woodrow Wilson has exactly the same 
political philosophy. He has often disagreed 
with Roosevelt about particular issues. He 
has always agreed with him as to the funda- 
mental matters of method. He too has played 
the game with infinite skill. He too has kept 
the good of the country as he saw it in mind." 

We were silent for a little while. I was busy 
thinking of all that my friend had said. But 
he was not through. As the dessert was served 
he spoke again: 

"The only trouble with this type of prac- 
tical idealism is that you pay such a big price 
for it. Roosevelt did. Wilson does. Once 
it was said of Wilson that he got a certain 
amount of forward-looking legislation at the 
price of the worst pork-barrel Congress since 
the Civil War. We must work out a method 
by which the practical idealist gets his results 
without sacrificing so much." 

"And how can we do it?" I asked. 

"That will have to wait for another time," 
laughed Clearfield. The train was slowing up 
at the moment. "This is my station," said 
John. "Have a good time in New York and 
we will talk this thing out when you come 
back," 



76 THE OPINIONS OF 



THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN POLITICS 

WE were seated once more in John 
Clearfield's comfortable, capacious den. 
The Man of Books and Men had in his hand 
a volume discussing the history of political 
parties in America. This reminded me of a 
discussion of this very subject which had 
taken place when we were both traveling East 
a few weeks before. I reverted to the topic 
again. 

"You said the other day on the train," I 
began, "that we would have to evolve a new 
political method in America. Do you know 
what it will be?" 

John Clearfield kept turning over the pages 
of the book in his hand as he sat thinking. 
At length he said: 

"If I remember, I had made several state- 
ments: First, the old type of organization 
politician must be completely overthrown; 
second, the isolated political independent is 
respected and helpless; third, the practical 
political idealist who plays the game shrewdly 
but for the good of the country, does get some 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 77 

important things accomplished, but he pays 
too great a price. In fact, the price is so great 
that we must find some more inexpensive way 
to get important things done." 

"That's a good summary of your discussion," 
I rephed. "Now what is the next step.^" 

"Before I take the next step," rephed my 
friend, "let me make you ready for it." 

He walked back and forth across the room 
for a few minutes. Then he spoke again: 

"There is a curious fact about American 
political parties which you may have observed. 
The two great parties are always tending 
toward an equilibrium. Sometimes one is the 
stronger, sometimes the other. But, on the 
whole, they tend to balance each other. 
Thoughtful observers have seen in this tendency 
a suggestion of far-reaching importance. Where 
the parties so nearly equal each other in 
strength a small but determined balance of 
power group could turn an election either way. 
If in every congressional district you had a 
group of independents organized and ready 
for action, studying the political situation, and 
giving their votes to the man who stood 
effectively for the right things, their influence 
would be so far-reaching that they could 



78 THE OPINIONS OF 

transform American politics. They would not 
be impotent as was the isolated independent 
of an older day. They would be as incor- 
ruptible as he, but their organization, and the 
balance of power principle would make them 
most effective. Such organizations as the 
National Voters' League would keep them 
fully informed, and they would act together." 

"Would that mean the disruption of the 
present parties?" I inquired. 

"Not at all," replied John. "It would mean 
holding them to high principles. It would 
mean committing them to right practices. The 
earnest, alert balance of power groups would 
become so influential that at last neither 
party could afford to countenance practices of 
which they did not approve. The organized 
independent groups would simply enable the 
parties to function more adequately and faith- 

fully." 

"But isn't that rather a pipe dream, after 
all.'^" I inquired. "You don't expect it to 
happen, do you?" 

"A pipe dream, indeed!" burst out Clearfield 
scornfully. "It's right along the line of con- 
temporary political evolution. Don't you know 
that the number of people who vote inde- 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 79 

pendently is increasing all the while? Don't 
you know that an independent vote reelected 
President Wilson? And this growing body of 
thoughtful independents waits for wise leader- 
ship and adequate organization. The future is 
in their hands. 'V\Tien they realize what they 
can do as organized balance of power groups 
we will enter upon a new stage in America's 
political practice." 

Just at the moment the telephone rang. A 
voice at the other end of the wire called me to 
an important meeting. I found my hat and 
overcoat and hurried away. Soon I was sitting 
with a group of men who were busily dis- 
cussing a situation acute with the need of 
reform. Incidentally, there were many sharp 
criticisms of the present condition of American 
politics. All this set me to thinking the more 
of John Clearfield's plan. I wonder if he 
is right? 



THE OPINIONS OF 



OFF FOR THE SUMMER 

JOHN CLEARFIELD was in the highest 
possible spirits. The well-oiled machinery 
of his oflSce was moving with fine precision. 
A notable case had just been decided to his 
entire satisfaction after a vigorous tussle. The 
vacation time was approaching and John was 
busy selecting the little box of books he always 
carried of! with him to the mountain cottage 
where he so often spent the summer. 

This was in the year nineteen sixteen and 
for one hour the Man of Books and Men 
seemed to have forgotten the presence of the 
World War. His mind was off among the hills 
and the fresh and invigorating mountain air 
might have been blowing in his face. At least 
his rapt look and the flush of health upon his 
cheek suggested that he had left the big town, 
and was at that moment in his cottage beside 
the wonderful little mountain lake, for which 
he had such an affection. 

I looked at John enviously. "You don't need 
to go off for a vacation. You are as fit as an 
athlete after weeks of training," I observed. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 81 

"Oh, I'm fit," John admitted, lifting his arms 
and contracting the muscles which stood out 
so obviously. "I'm fit. But I'm a bit stale 
for all that. The hills will put me all right in 
a week. And after two months of it I'll be 
ready for another ten months of a man's work. 
It's only by resting before he's really pressed 
by the need of it that a man keeps his fight- 
ing edge." 

I chuckled a little as I murmured "fighting 
edge." This phrase so perfectly described 
John. 

Now he was bending over the little wooden 
box which was to contain his summer's 
treasures. 

He stood beside it and began to speak 
oracularly. 

"No book published since 1900 is to go into 
this box. Of course I'll have some new books 
sent up to the cottage. But this box is to 
represent old masters and old friends. Most 
of the summer I'm going to cultivate humility 
for myself and my generation by reading 
notable books which were written before I 
began to practice law." 

One after another he picked up several 
volumes of Hazlitt's essays. "There's urbanity 



82 THE OPINIONS OF 

and insight and lucid speech with an echo of 
music in it," he said. "I'm so busy making 
sentences that I keep forgetting how to build 
paragraphs. I'm so busy balancing epigrams 
on a verbal tight rope, that I forget how a 
really leisurely and distinguished sentence can 
move with dignity down a highway. But 
Hazlitt changes all that. He makes me 
ashamed of my nervous haste. He gives me 
back the old perspective of ample and easy 
culture expressing itself in phrases whose dig- 
nity equals their penetration and whose quiet 
charm matches their caustic strength. I'll 
have a good time with Hazlitt this summer." 

His hand was on another book whose title 
I could not see. 

"I know what it is," I cried. "That is 
Henry Esmond. In your present mood you 
couldn't possibly do without Thackeray." 

John laughingly admitted that I was right. 
Then he picked up another volume. "Now, 
magician, name this book and get a real repu- 
tation for reading yoiu- friend's mind." 

I hesitated a moment and then ventured a 
guess. 

"It's George Eliot's Romola," I said. 

John smiled a little ironically. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 83 

"No, it isn't Romola," he said. "But it is 
John Inglesant, and I suppose that belongs 
to the same class. I'm going to get into the 
Cavalier mood again. I'm a Puritan by nature 
and habit of mind. But Shorthouse always 
makes me feel that there is a real word which 
the Cavalier has to say." 

Then John went to a shelf where I knew 
he kept his favorite poets. 

He picked up worn volumes of Tennyson and 
Browning and a volume of Milton's poems 
which suggested the attention of a devoted 
reader. He saw the twinkle in my eye, and 
spoke. 

"Do you think Milton saves one from being 
Mid-Victorian.^ His mind rouses me, and his 
music at its best is like a pipe organ. Any- 
how I'm not going to be frightened out of 
allegiance to Tennyson and Browning. Tenny- 
son is an orchestra playing in the moonlight 
near a waterfall. And Browning is a dream 
city where people are so human that you have 
to prick yourself to make sure they are not 
real. And how he thinks! He had enough 
ideas to furnish three centuries of poets. And 
he had a subtle music of his own." 

Then John stooped again. I bent over him. 



84 THE OPINIONS OF 

Guizot's History of Civilization was there ("to 
be read after the war," interjected the Man of 
Books and Men). Plato's Republic was by its 
side ("to be compared with modem concep- 
tions of Democracy," said Clearfield), and a 
volume of F. W. Robertson's sermons was near 
("to keep my soul alive," remarked my friend). 
I turned to go while the process of selection 
was still going on "The best will come last," 
taunted John Clearfield cheerily as I walked 
through the door. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 85 



THE HUMAN TOUCH 

"T HAVE just finished reading Bill Stidger's 
I last book," said John Clearfield. There 
was a twinkle in his eye and there was a chuckle 
in his voice. But back of the twinkle and back 
of the chuckle there was something which made 
me feel that my friend was more than ordinarily 
moved. 

"What an amazing chap Stidger is," he went 
on. "He has all the temperament and all the 
virile individual quality which we associate 
with genius. He has style, too — his own style 
— very often he tears sentences to bits in his 
hurry and just leaves a gripping emotion rising 
from a rather confused mass of words. Then 
sometimes his words echo with music, and 
sometimes they gleam with light. Nobody has 
ever tamed his style. I fancy nobody ever will. 
I am rather glad he doesn't have the over- 
sophisticated literary consciousness which 
makes it impossible for some highly trained 
men of letters ever to forget themselves in an 
abandon of glowing sentences." 

"That's a good deal of a concession for you 
to make," I interrupted with some amusement. 



86 THE OPINIONS OF 

Jolin smiled a little grimly. "The literary 
self-control which shuts life out and keeps 
distinction at the expense of vitality has 
spoiled many a promising young writer," he 
shot back. "But about Stidger," he went on. 
"I have been trying to analyze the secret of 
his power. Of course he has a forceful and 
magnetic personality. The day he stormed a 
number of publishing houses in New York 
and sold wares written and unwritten in one 
after another illustrated that. But it isn't 
merely personality and it isn't merely force. 
It's sympathy. It's the human touch. Bill 
senses the human heart of a situation in an 
instant and then he runs off to find a sentence 
which will tell the story so that it will mean 
to you just what it means to him. And in a 
minute the sentence is carried back in triumph, 
perhaps a little worn for the tussel, but very 
much alive, like a dog with bright eyes gleam- 
ing through shaggy hair. This last book of 
Stidger's, Star Dust from the Dugouts, is all 
the while talking about soldiers and religion. 
The soldiers are very real. The religion is 
very unconventional. But you feel that you 
are getting close to the essence of religion and 
close to the little shrines covered up at the 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 87 

center of the soldier's life. Bill is a born 
idealist. He knows all about the world. He 
knows all sorts of other things. But he went 
to France as a prospector. Anybody can tell 
you where gold was not. Stidger wastes no 
time on that. He tells you where the gold 
was and is. And he calls it star dust. The 
book leaves a good taste m your mouth. You 
are glad there is a young fellow in America 
who thinks the thoughts which glow in Stid- 
ger's mind. You are glad he writes them out 
with such an abandon of vital force. You like 
to think that he speaks for no end of Americans 
who have the same things in their hearts, but 
do not know how to get them on their tongues." 



88 THE OPINIONS OF 



THE ART OF BEING ALONE 

JOHN CLEARFIELD was in fine fettle. 
He seemed to exude a sort of contagious, 
vital energy. His eye had a quick, telling 
luster. His voice rang with a sort of gay 
challenge. His step seemed set to an intangible 
decisive music. He gave you a sense of quiver- 
ing potential energy. I looked at him ad- 
miringly and then asked: 

"What has happened to you, Old Chap? 
You seem all made over and quite as good as 
new." 

"Really better than new," laughed John. 
"You see I've been away on a retreat, and I'm 
rested through and through." 

"Where did you go.^" I asked. "And what 
did you do?" 

"I went to the country and for ten whole 
days I did not do a thing but eat and sleep and 
walk and dream." 

"And did that put all this snap into your 
eyes, and all this electricity into your way of 
walking about?" I inquired. 

"That and no end of other things," replied 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 89 

the Man of Books and Men. "I have really 
caught up with myself and I've found the 
relish of life all over again." 

"But can a man get all that in ten days.^*'* 
I wondered. 

"It depends upon the man," said my friend. 
"Most people do not know how to be alone. 
They get on their own nerves. They get un- 
speakably restless. They wear themselves away 
being tired of themselves. They pack up their 
troubles in their own small heads, and think 
of them over and over again until they become 
big as mountains and completely unendurable. 
Rest becomes a disease and not a cure. Leisure 
becomes a malignant attack and they are glad 
to be free from it at last. When they are 
alone they meet their worst foe, and when 
they come back to work they are tremendously 
glad to escape from themselves." 

"It's a rather doleful picture you paint," I 
admitted. "But how do you escape from all 
this?" 

"When I am alone," said John Clearfield, 
oracularly, "the first thing I do is to decide 
to be completely amiable with myself. All 
the temptation to say ugly things to myself 
just because I am alone, I resolutely put aside. 



90 THE OPINIONS OF 

I refuse to remember anything unkind which 
anybody had ever said about me. I refuse to 
think over the last ugly bit of newspaper mis- 
interpretation. I think of all the pleasant 
things which I can lay my hands on. I special- 
ize in the happy, delightful memories which are 
hiding away in various parts of my mind. I 
treat myself as an honored guest who deserves 
the finest and most gracious consideration. And 
so all the blue devils of ugly thoughts give up 
the fight at last and I am left in a perfectly 
quiet and restful and dreamy world. It takes 
about three days to get completely relaxed. 
The remainder of the time I take long walks, 
and eat heartily three times a day, and dream 
dull, easy-going, contented dreams. At the 
end of ten days I am fit and fine and ready 
to get into the game again and play it with 
all my might." 

"You don't get much mental or moral 
discipline out of that, do you?" I asked. 

"I don't go into it for mental or moral 
discipline. I get that in other ways and at 
other times. My rest retreat is for just one 
purpose and that purpose gets accomplished. 
I know no end of men who say that they go 
away to rest. Really they go away to think 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 91 

about their business and tbat is the reason 
why they come back tired and unrefreshed. I 
know a man who used to have a report of his 
business sent to him every day by wireless when 
he was crossing the ocean. That man had never 
learned the real use of the sea. An ocean voyage 
is a time to let go of business and forget alljthe 
worries. This man made it a time to remember. 
He did not know how to be alone." 

*'But don't you get dreadfully lonely with 
your mind altogether empty?" 

"I did at first. But that was merely a stage 
through which I had to pass. When I quite 
refused to let it get the best of me the loneli- 
ness got tired of being around and departed. 
The art of having a contented and empty 
mind does not come without a struggle. But 
it is worth all that it costs and more." 

We sat silent for a little while. Then John said : 

"When you fill your mind again after it has 
had a real rest everything is so new and fresh 
and wonderful that it's like being a child again 
and getting those bright first impressions 
which are the glory of youth and the haunting 
memory of maturity." 

"That's your secret, I think," I said at last. 
"You keep the boy alive in the man." 



92 THE OPINIONS OF 



THE MAN OF THE HOUR 

THE other day I found John Clearfield 
in a comfortable corner of his favorite 
club. He was fingering a magazine, but it 
was evident at once that he was not reading. 
There was a little wrinkle in his forehead which 
always indicates close and intense thought. 
I dropped into a chair beside him. In a mo- 
ment he looked up. 

"Behold a beggar," I began. *T am going 
from door to door asking kindly people to give 
me a few thoughts from their ample store. 
I am an intellectual vagrant living from ear 
to brain. I have had no real mental food for 
over twenty-four hours and I am very nearly 
famished. Kind sir, will you supply me from 
your bountiful board.^" 

The Man of Books and Men grinned cheer- 
fully. 

"You are always dangerous when you are 
modest," he replied. "I know perfectly well 
that you came here with the definite intention 
of trying to convert me to some view which 
has captured your mind. But I am going to 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 93 

get the best of you. I am not going to allow 
you to talk. I am going to take you at your 
word and do the talking myself. I am going 
to be as oracular as Macaulay, and as persistent 
with my assertions as Socrates was with his 
questions. You might as well sit back com- 
fortably, for I intend to fix you with my eye 
as the Ancient Mariner fixed the wedding 
guest, and you are to sit speechless while I talk." 
I twisted myself into a position in my chair 
which John declared looked supremely uncom- 
fortable and which I declared was the most 
restful and easy position possible. Then I 
looked him in the eye, and gave the signal. 
"Shoot away." 

"The world won't let you alone these days," 
began my friend. "I have all sorts of things 
to do and all sorts of things to think about. 
But this persistent, impertinent world keeps 
doing things to attract my attention. I used 
to think I was capable of making a fairly 
accurate forecast regarding the future. Now I 
never know what is going to happen next. 
The world has taken the bit in its teeth, and 
I'm not quite sure but it's made up its mind to 
go dashing off on its own account and leave the 
solar system behind. What will you do then?" 



94 THE OPINIONS OF 

The Man of Books and Men paused dra- 
matically. 

"Fortunately I'm not allowed to talk. So I 
do not need to make any reply," I threw back 
at him. But already he was in the saddle 
again and off on a vigorous canter of speech. 

"There are two kinds of people I am watch- 
ing with a good deal of anxiety," said John. 
"In the first place I am watching the Bour- 
bons all over the world. True to caste, they 
have learned nothing and they have forgotten 
nothing. With the most childlike confidence 
and assurance they are ready to turn back 
the clock of civilization. They do not see that 
the war has changed anything. They do not 
see that we live in a new day. They refuse to 
make concessions of any kind. They are 
willing to fight to the death for every old 
privilege. They put themselves solidly in the 
way of the advancing life of the world." 

Clearfield sat silent for a moment, while I 
turned over in my mind the story of an en- 
counter in which he had engaged with this 
type of man a few days before. The story of 
the argument had gone all over town and I 
had received a vivid account of the wrathful 
and bewildered impotence in which John had 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 95 

left his opponent when the talk was done. 
But now my friend was speaking again. 

"Then I am watching the people who want 
to make everything over completely all at 
once, and who have absolutely no notion of the 
cost or the dangers or of the proper method. 
They assume with the most innocent assurance 
that every good thing in the social structure 
will quietly maintain itself, while they go ham- 
mering away at important changes. They 
have not thought out to their inevitable con- 
sequences the changes which they suggest. 
They do not understand the world they are 
going to make over again. They have the 
most tragic ignorance of the way in which 
human nature actually functions. And they 
are quite capable in their irresponsible fashion 
of destroying the very civilization which they 
are eager to make into something finer. They 
represent a wealth of idealism. But they are 
undisciplined and untrained in practical rela- 
tionships. And while their best motives are 
the hope of the world, very often their methods 
are a menace to the world." 

Again John lapsed into silence. Then a gleam 
came into his eye, and he spoke with more 
than his usual vigor. 



96 THE OPINIONS OF 

"We must produce a new type. We must 
develop a new attitude. The man of the hour 
is the man who appreciates the past and yet 
looks forward to fresh and new elements in 
the future. He must be a man who sees that 
you must hold civilization steady while you 
go on with your surgery. He is not willing 
to report that the operation has been success- 
ful but the patient has died. He will be as 
radical as the wisdom of a real forward look. 
He will be as conservative as the most genuine 
appreciation of those slowly built solidarities 
which must be kept at the basis of any depend- 
able life for the world. He will combine cau- 
tion with daring. He will gain the confidence 
of those who are afraid of disintegration. He 
will secure the loyal support of those who 
seek wise and legitimate change. He will not 
push the world apart into contending groups. 
He will draw men together to work in har- 
mony about common tasks. He will — " 

At this moment we became conscious that 
the room was being paged for some club 
member. 

"Mr. Clearfield," rang out a sharp insistent 
voice. John got to his feet and was off at once. 
And so the conversation came to an end. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 97 



THE MAN WHO IS LOST IN A 
POINT OF VIEW 

THE other day I found John Clearfield 
walking up and down in his den with 
furrowed brow and hands closed tightly. It 
seemed evident that he had just come out of 
a fight or else was just about to get into a fight. 
John always has some stiff battle of the mind 
as a part of the day's work. So I was not at 
all surprised at the general air of belligerency 
which was expressing itself in his whole per- 
sonality. The only question had to do with 
the nature of this particular conflict. 

"Well, what's the fight about?" I asked as I 
dropped into a chair. 

John turned upon me wrathfully: 
"There isn't any fight. That's just what is 
the matter," he burst out. "Do you know 
that America is getting to be a series of various 
groups who take their opinions ready made and 
do almost no thinking for themselves? With 
the usual American boy getting an education 
consists, in as far as it has any intellectual 
aspect at all, in making a collection of the 



98 THE OPINIONS OF 

things which a well-made man ought to think, 
and in learning how to express them with a 
certain amount of deftness and skill. We are 
becoming a nation of human cabinets, each 
containing a large amount of carefully classi- 
fied material, and each complacently contented 
to go on with an actual minimum of genuine 
thought." 

"What did you eat for dinner last night?" 
I inquired of the Man of Books and Men. 
My friend smiled cheerfully. 

"I had a perfectly nutritious and a perfectly 
digestible dinner at six-thirty last night, and 
I slept like a top," he said, crisply. "It all 
comes out of a book which I have been reading 
this morning. It is a clever book. It is a 
wonderfully attractive book. The author thinks 
he has an intellectual life. His readers are apt 
to think that he has an intellectual life. But 
really there are no indications of deep and tell- 
ing personal grapple with his theme. There are 
plenty of thoughts. There is no thought. The 
author has accepted with the most innocent 
and child-like simplicity a whole point of view 
and he has quite lost himself and his own 
mind in his eagerness to exploit it. It reminds 
you of the classic criticism in a great review. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 99 

*There is much in this book which is true. 
There is much in this book which is new. 
But that which is true is not new. And that 
which is new is not true.' " 

"What is the book.^ And who is the author.?" 
I put in at this moment. 

"I am not going to tell you either," replied 
my friend a little defiantly. ' *I don't want to 
discuss that book. I want to talk about the 
general principles which the reading of the 
book brought into my mind. And if we get 
to thinking of this book and its author and 
his contentions we will simply clutter up our 
minds." 

"All right, Autocrat, shoot away," I cried 
in mock submissiveness. 

"Whenever an age begins to idealize its own 
methods and its own thought processes," said 
John, "it is time for somebody to object. We 
have just about come to the time for another 
Francis Bacon, who will point out our idols. 
Or we need another Descartes, who will brush 
aside a good deal of contemporary intellectual 
rubbish in the name of a really constructive 
criticism. Our schools are producing too 
many nice boys who know what intellectual 
clothes to wear, but who are perfectly helpless 



100 THE OPINIONS OF 

when it comes to really original and inventive 
and resourceful mental activity. We give them 
a finely worked-out point of view and expect 
them to substitute mental submission for men- 
tal activity." 

''Would you have students object merely 
for the sake of objecting, even when there is 
good reason to believe that it is the truth 
which is being taught to them?" I inquired. 

John had a dangerous flicker in his eye as 
he replied. 

"Our knowledge is not complete enough as 
yet to make that expedient necessary. And in 
any event truth is so rich and many-sided a 
thing that one expression rarely does justice 
to all of its aspects. It is always safe to look 
for the element the teacher has missed, even 
when he is a very able man. I am only saying 
that I object as much to the modern scientific 
scholasticism, as I object to the scholasticism 
of the Middle Ages. Each is wonderfully acute 
and completely barren." 

"In other words, you think the methods of 
a law school would be better than the methods 
of a contemporary college of liberal arts?" I 
ventured. 

My friend turned sharply upon me at that. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 101 

"Oh, I admit that we have our own scholasti- 
cism," he replied. "There is the same fight 
all the way along the line. But I do insist that 
our boys should not be imprisoned in the 
views of their contemporaries. I insist that 
the production of a keenly original and in- 
quiring type of mind, which is not exhausted 
by its own methods of technical research, is 
one of the great ends of the whole process of 
education." 

"And, now, will you tell me the name of the 
book which stirred you that you wanted to 
say all this.^^" I asked. 

John smiled in a tantalizing way he has. 

"Call it Everyman's first book," he replied. 



102 THE OPINIONS OF 



"PREACHING AND PAGANISM" 

IT was evident that John Clearfield was 
deeply moved. He was walking about his 
study with a sort of restless eagerness. 

"Come in," he said. "Take that chair by 
the fire. And do not dare to say a word until 
I am through. I received your letter a couple 
of weeks ago. I was a little amused at your 
enthusiasm. But I sent out for Professor 
Fitch's Preaching and Paganism at once. I 
was a few days getting it. I have just finished 
my first reading of the book." 

He picked a volume off the library table as 
he spoke. I stood beside him as he turned its 
pages. 

"You seem to have marked nearly every- 
thing in the book," I observed. 

"Not quite so bad as that," said John. 
"Professor Fitch gave me most of the kinds 
of pleasure there are. And he did not deny 
me that really luxurious pleasure of disagree- 
ment." 

"And with what did you disagree?" I asked. 

"O, I'm not going to begin with disagree- 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 103 

ments," said my friend. "Besides you are 
not to ask questions. You are to listen." 

"You have all the ears I possess at the mo- 
ment," I cried. 

"And how many more ears do you expect to 
possess at some later moment .f^" asked my ironic 
friend. 

"I'll have at least one new ear for sarcasm," 
I replied. 

But John would not be diverted long. 

"This book," he said, "may not be a great 
prescription. It is at least a very great piece 
of diagnosis. And, personally, I am inclined 
to think that the discerning reader will find 
far more than an astonishingly penetrating 
analysis of our whole intellectual and ethical 
and religious situation. The amazing thing 
about the book, of course, is just that you 
have a prophet among the Sauls. Just this 
sort of prophecy nobody expected from Pro- 
fessor Fitch. He is an intellectual Brahman. 
He is a humanist by nature and more so by 
practice. The evangelical tradition is not 
precious in his eyes. Indeed, when he makes 
a tremendous evangelical statement he makes 
it instinctively by means of a set of fresh and 
brilliant phrases which suggest no connection 



104 THE OPINIONS OF 

with the evangelical tradition. He hardly sus- 
pects how near his conscience brings him to 
places which his taste would avoid. But it is 
just all this which makes the book so tre- 
mendous. Out of the heart of the group so 
ready to make noble social passion a substi- 
tute for transforming ethical contact with the 
character of Almighty God comes this flashing 
sword of protest. And what execution the 
sword does accomplish. The humanism which 
would be a substitute for religion is seen in 
all its pitiable helplessness. You turn to that 
cock-sure cosmopolitanism which releases every 
lawless voice of the body and finds distin- 
guished phrases in which to disguise the un- 
abashed animalism of it, and lo it stands before 
you unclothed and the wrongness of its mind 
and the real quality of its nature in clear view. 
All your favorite illusions, all your bright and 
happy evasions go down before you. And at 
last the ultimate moral and spiritual problem 
emerges. It must be faced. It cannot be 
avoided. And in this high and honest mood 
you meet as if for the first time the great 
God and the mighty personality of Jesus Christ." 
I sat quite still, somewhat overwhelmed by 
this onslausjht. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 105 

"With all its trenchant sternness it is never 
narrow and it is never provincial," John went 
on. "The vast weight of erudition which 
Professor Fitch carries so lightly is at his 
service all the while. It is a citizen of the 
whole world who says these things. It is a 
citizen of all the ages who brings this master- 
ing word in the name of ethically transforming 
religion. It is a man of the widest sympathy 
who makes you see that sympathy does not 
prevent a clear mind from making terribly 
cleaving distinctions." 

"And now I think I want to know some- 
thing about the disagreements," I ventured. 

John smiled at that. 

"Well, I believe in worship. But I do not think 
Doctor Fitch always keeps in mind his own 
most fundamental insights when he discusses 
it. The fact is, he has come from the moun- 
tain so soon after seeing the vision that he 
has not related it to all the rest of his thinking. 
So there are amazingly interesting contradic- 
tions. But they all grow out of the type of 
mind more interested in reality than in formal 
logic. And so the very statements with which 
you do not agree stimulate you in a surprising 
fashion." 



106 THE OPINIONS OF 

I stood for a little while fingering the pages 
of Professor Fitch's book. Then John spoke 
again : 

"I have a subtitle," he said. "It is this: 
'What Every Preacher Ought to Know.' " 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 107 



THE UNITED STATES AND THE 
WORLD 

THE telephone rang just as I was finishing 
my dinner the other night. John Clear- 
field's voice came distinctly over the wire: 

"Jack Silton is just back from France. He 
is spending the night with me. Don't you 
want to come over and see him.?" 

My reply was eager enough, for the gritty 
young major had won my heart long before 
he went to West Point. I had watched his 
whole career with the keenest interest and 
relish. 

So an hour later I was sitting by the library 
table in the home of the Man of Books and 
Men, looking across at the bronzed face of the 
oflScer who had seen such testing service on the 
Western Front. He had the way, so charac- 
teristic of many of the men who got into the 
heart of the thing which was fought out in 
Europe, of unconsciously giving you the im- 
pression that he had not really come back 
from France. Sometimes he would seem to 
look through you and beyond you as if he 



108 THE OPINIONS OF 

were seeing things invisible to your eyes. 
Clearfield, with his sharp incisive kindness, 
was inclined to call our friend to account 
for it. 

"You must come and spend a week with us 
when you really get back to America," he said 
as we sat down together. 

The major looked up quickly. 

*Ts it as bad as that.f^" he asked. "Really 
you must forgive me. I confess that I can't 
quite realize even yet that the war is over. 
And I find my mind back there in the midst 
of it all just when I think I am most safely 
and completely in America again. You see, 
war is a most masterful thing. It seizes you 
and it holds you. And when the fighting is 
over, you are still held in the grip of the expe- 
rience. Just give us time. We will all come 
back to America after a while. And we will 
come caring for our country more than we ever 
did before." 

We sat silent for a moment. It was evident 
that Major Silton had something more to say, 
and was feeling about for the right words. 
After a little he went on: 

"We are eager enough to come back. But, 
after all, you must not expect us ever to be 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 109 

quite the same chaps again. Too much has 
happened. We have seen too much. We have 
thought too much. We have been shaken out 
of our old selves. And we have found out 
many things of which we did not have a glim- 
mer three years ago." 

John Clearfield was leaning forward eagerly. 

"That's what we want to know about, Jack," 

he said, earnestly. "Tell us some of the things 

you pulled out of the wreck on the other side 

of the world." 

There was a deeply serious and friendly 
invitation about Clearfield's very tone which 
anybody would have found it hard to resist. 
Jack Silton did not try to resist it. He seemed 
to want to talk about these matters to his 
two old friends. He moved a little in his 
chair, and then he spoke: 

"You know we began by discovering the 
United States of America over there," he said. 
"Most of us had taken for granted the old 
U. S. A. before. All of a sudden we came to 
know that you can't do that. Some things 
just as much a part of our American life as 
the rising of the sun, some things which we 
had rather assumed to belong to all the people 
in the world, we didn't find over there. We 



110 THE OPINIONS OF 

began to learn where we were different. And 
then we began to ask why we were different. 
And then we began to see the courage and the 
faith that had worked out our American insti- 
tutions and had put them so deeply into our 
life that we provincial Americans who had not 
lived in Europe never realized the uniqueness 
or the significance of our own life. Every once 
and a while we would find on the other side 
that we were making assumptions in the most 
natural way which the people to whom we were 
talking did not make and did not understand. 
It was a great study. And out of it I found 
the meaning of the Americanism which is in 
my very blood." 

The major rose and began to walk about 
the room, talking as he moved. 

"It was by no means all a one-sided thing, 
though," he said. "One soon began to under- 
stand that if we have some things to give to 
our friends on the other side, they have many 
things to give to us. I got to feel that the 
world is much older, and much bigger, and 
much more complex than I had ever under- 
stood before. At first I felt rather resentful. 
I wanted to throw it all off. I wanted to come 
back to the old America, with the old out- 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 111 

look and the old plans. Then I saw that 
would not do. I got to know that the world 
is one big world. And we are a part of it. 
We can't get out of it. All together we have 
got to face the world's problem. And all to- 
gether we have got to work it out. After 
that I took no end of trouble trying to under- 
stand the fellows over there. I tried to get 
at the things they were so sure of that they 
never talked about them. I tried to get at 
the things they assumed without ever saying 
them. And all the while I got to understand 
myself better. And all the while I got to 
understand them better. Then in the fighting 
I found out a lot of things about human na- 
ture. They were things that go 'way down 
beneath the differences which mark off French- 
men and Englishmen and Americans. I got 
the feel of the world somehow. That's just 
about the only way I can put it. And I think 
that puts it right. I did for the first time 
really get the feel of the world. And so while 
I am a better American than I ever was before, 
I am a citizen of the world now. And I wasn't 
when I went to France." 

We were quite silent for a little while. Then 
Clearfield said: 



112 THE OPINIONS OF 

"I wonder how typical you are. Jack? Did 
it happen to many, this thing you are talking 
about?" 

Jack Silton was his characteristically modest 
self, but he gave you the feeling that he was 
right, when he replied: 

"Maybe I thought more about it than some 
of the fellows. But we were all up against the 
same proposition. And most of us got it 
even if we don't talk much about it. We 
know any amount more what the United 
States is about. We know a lot more what 
the world is about. And we are not going to 
forget." 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 113 



THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 

THE war left a deep mark upon the person- 
ality of John Clearfield. It was as if every 
issue was fought over in his mind, and every 
battle came to its climax of struggle in his heart. 
He exposed the whole sensitive surface of his 
inner life to all the tense and tragic quality of the 
life of the passing days. Then he managed to get 
to France on a piece of Red Cross activity, and 
was with the soldiers there when peace came. 
When he returned to America I found that his 
insight had been sharpened and his whole power 
of thought had been quickened by all his expe- 
riences. As the winter wore on his interest in 
occurrences at Paris was intense. From the 
first he was an eager advocate of the League 
of Nations. On the morning when the President 
was setting forth on his second trip to France 
I met Clearfield swinging down a street in 
Chicago. He greeted me in his usual vital and 
hearty fashion and seizing my arm carried 
me off on a less frequented street almost be- 
fore I knew what he was about. 

"Have you read the President's New York 



114 THE OPINIONS OF 

speech?" he began, "or have you been too 
busy with the Nicene Creed to think about 
contemporary politics?" 

"If Athanasius were alive to-day he would 
read the President's speech before he ate his 
breakfast," I replied, with some heat. "Besides, 
there is the most real connection between the 
Nicene Creed and the President's speech. One 
was to make the world safe for religion. The other 
is to help to make the world safe for politics." 

"I won't have it," laughed John. "I won't 
listen. This situation is complex enough with- 
out trying to mix up theology and world politics. 
Theologian, go back to your den and leave me 
in peace — if that is the best you can do." 

"Then it's your move," I replied. "What is 
the best you can do? What have you to say 
about the meeting in New York last night?" 

John quickened his pace a little, and I, 
perforce, followed his example. Then he spoke 
with a sort of sharp, quick emphasis. 

"Last night's meeting lifted the issue com- 
pletely out of party politics," he began. "When 
Mr. Taft and Mr. Wilson spoke from the 
same platform at the Metropolitan Opera 
House for the League of Nations, notice was 
given to the world that we are not to meet 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 115 

this issue as Republicans or as Democrats. 
We are to meet this issue as Americans." 

"How do you feel about the Monroe Doc- 
trine .f^'* I asked. 

John Clearfield stopped short for a moment. 
"I heard you say in a lecture the other night," 
he began, "that Darwin dealt with the doc- 
trine of evolution in one field, while Herbert 
Spencer made it a universal principle. Let me 
paraphrase your words. The message of Pres- 
ident Monroe applied to a particular part of 
the world. The League of Nations gives the 
Monroe Doctrine a universal application. It is 
a generalized Monroe Doctrine dealing with the 
whole world. The things Monroe desired to do 
for a few peoples the League of Nations is to do 
for all peoples. Everyone who believes in the 
Monroe Doctrine should be an advocate of 
such a league as has been planned in Paris." 

"How do you feel about the surrender of 
sovereignty which is involved on the part of 
the United States.'^" I inquired. 

Clearfield was instant with his reply. "There 
are only two ways to avoid some surrender 
of sovereignty. One is absolute isolation on 
the part of a nation, so that it gives nothing 
and receives nothing. One is world mastery, so 



116 THE OPINIONS OF 

that all nations obey the behests of the con- 
quering people. Germany tried to have the 
second. China once had the first. In all 
other nations every deep and significant rela- 
tion involves give and take. Every treaty in- 
volves some surrender of sovereignty. Every 
admission of principles of international law 
involves some surrender of sovereignty. The 
League of Nations asks the surrender of nothing 
vital to our full and productive and self-respect- 
ing life. And it promises a new era of hope 
and of achievement for all the world." 

"Ought the present document to be amend- 
ed?" I asked John some months later. 

"It ought to be perfected in the light of 
experience of its working," Clearfield replied. 
"It is a remarkable achievement as it is, 
though I do not regard it as in any sense final. 
But we need to remember that amendments 
which seem innocent to us may involve rela- 
tions which risk the whole structure. On the 
whole, there is a good deal to be said for putting 
it to work and then amending it in the light of 
practical knowledge of its functioning." 

"Are you solicitous about the effect of the 
present war of hostile criticism .f^" 

"Not I," declared my lawyer friend. "Part 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 117 

of it is just wholesome caution. There was the 
most nervous and frightened criticism of the 
Constitution under which we Hve in the 
United States before it was adopted. Every 
forward movement must run the gauntlet of 
that sort of thing. Part of the criticism is 
just petty partisan politics. Mr. Taft is 
making that sort of thing increasingly impossi- 
ble. Part of it is of more sinister origin. The 
insight of the American people can be trusted 
to deal with that. The American people as a 
whole are for the league. When the crisis 
comes the man who opposes it will commit 
political suicide. In the meantime every 
church, every social group, and every indi- 
vidual who sees the issues should communicate 
with the senators. The voice of the people may 
not always be the voice of God. But it is a voice 
which the Senate does not dare to ignore." 

Long after events had seemed to falsify his 
predictions, I referred to this conversation. 
Clearfield only smiled a slow quiet smile. 
"The time element is always dangerous in 
prophecy," he said. "In the long run America 
will justify my confidence." 



118 THE OPINIONS OF 



A NOTABLE PREACHER 

"TT HEARD a sermon this morning," de- 
J_ clared John Clearfield with a note of 
triumph in his voice. "And there was a real 
man back of the sermon," he added as he 
settled down in a chair beside me in the writing 
room of a certain New York hotel. 

The two of us had landed from the Adriatic 
the day before and we were tasting the de- 
lights of the homeland with eager relish after 
our weeks in the Old World. John was look- 
ing at me with a touch of mischief in his eye. 
"Why did you never tell me of Henry Sloane 
CoflSn.f^" he asked. "You know that I depend 
on you to be a sort of incarnate who's who in 
the ministry for me. Think of what I have 
been missing. I am in New York usually one 
Sunday out of every six. And it was only by 
accident that I dropped into the Madison 
Avenue Presbyterian Church this morning." 

My friend sat with his chin held reflectingly 
in his hand for a moment. (I often tell him 
that I do not feel sure that he uses his brains 
when he reflects, but I know that he reflects 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 119 

by means of his chin.) After a httle he looked 
up with a quiet, serious Hght in his eye. 

"One often takes his body to church," said 
John, "but Dr. Coffin took my mind to church. 
Then I found that he had taken my con- 
science to church. And soon I knew that my 
heart was there too." 

"Tell me about the sermon," I said, leaning 
a little nearer to my friend. The orchestra in 
the dining room was making music merrily, 
and a brilliant scene revealed itself as one 
looked out into the long corridors of the hotel. 
But I was intent on knowing more about the 
man who had captured the interest of my 
friend. John is the most critical of men. But 
he has a noble simplicity and a fine responsive- 
ness whenever a note of genuine reality is 
struck. 

"He talked about EHsha. And he talked 
about education. He talked about a course 
of study which would teach men how to live 
alone with God. He spoke of a course of study 
which would teach men how to live with God 
among men. He spoke of a course of study 
which would bring a man into intimate and 
gripping contact with human life and human 
woe. And the degree to be conferred upon 



120 THE OPINIONS OF 

the student who had completed all the work 
was given m his text *Man of God.' A woman 
had called the prophet that. She had given 
him his degree." 

John moved a little in his chair. "It was 
a sermon which grew right out of the Bible. 
It was also a sermon which grew right out of 
modern life. Dr. CoflSn never intruded his 
culture. But you felt it all the while enrich- 
ing all that he said. He was sparing in his 
use of quotations. But they seemed taken out 
of the very quarry from which the sermon 
itself had come. And through it all Dr. CoflSn 
made you feel that he had lived, that he had 
known life, and that he really understood men. 
He touched contemporary problems with a 
skill and a certainty of movement which gave 
you a sort of surprised pleasure. He sent you 
away from the church quickened, and kindled 
and eager. Now, don't you wish you had 
been with me this morning.'^" 

I was about to reply. But John — how often 
I have told him that he had a way of inter- 
rupting before I had said a word — was off 
again. 

"And, man, you should have heard his little 
sermon to the children. It was all about a 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 121 

Jack-in-the-Pulpit. He held it up and he 
made it talk. He said he met many preachers 
in the woods and in the hills this summer. 
And you believed him. It is a wonderful 
world in which that man lives." 

Now it was my turn to go off on a long 
mental journey. John saw the mood coming 
and let me stray off with my thoughts. I 
knew that my friend had come near to the 
sources of a preacher's power in his last sentence 
of tribute— "It is a wonderful world in which 
that man lives." How can a man help young 
fellows to be the kind of men of whom that 
same thing will be said in some future day.^ 
I sat thinking of it for a long time. 



122 THE OPINIONS OF 



WITH JOHN CLEARFIELD AT SEA 

WHEN I came on board the Mauretania 
last Friday I kept an alert eye on the 
lookout for familiar faces. Before very long 
I gave a little start of pleasure as I beheld 
the figure of that brilliant human New Yorker, 
Dr. Nehemiah Boynton, the pastor of the 
Clinton Avenue Congregational Church in 
Brooklyn. In five minutes I was chuckling 
over one of his irresistible funny stories, and 
getting the glow of his wholesome optimistic 
personality. But the surprise of the day came 
when I looked up to find John Clearfield walk- 
ing aboard. "Is it really true," I cried, as I 
gripped his hand, "or are you a make-believe 
just about to vanish.^" 

The Man of Books and Men laughed in his 
hearty way. 

"I thought I'd give you a real experience of 
astonishment," he said as he sat down on a 
steamer chair beside me. "Never say again 
that I cannot keep a secret. And admit that 
I was the soul of pensive regret when I wished 
you bon voyage last week." 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 123 

"It really did sound authentic," I replied. 
"But what is taking you over? And how long 
are you going to stay?" 

At that John launched into an account of 
the intricate piece of work which required his 
presence in London. It was to be a hurried 
trip, for it was necessary for him to be in 
Chicago again before the end of August. As 
we talked the passengers were rapidly coming 
aboard and at length a warning whistle told 
us that we were about to be off. We all pressed 
to the railing and watched the people on the 
pier as the great old ship moved out into the 
Hudson. Down the river into the bay we 
moved, on past the Statue of Liberty, into the 
outer bay and then into the welcoming wonder 
of the sea. John and I were swinging about 
the deck arm in arm by this time and he was 
talking as happily as a boy let out from school. 

The days since have been full to the brim. 
The sea has been wonderfully friendly and the 
glorious moonlight nights have made talk a 
magic thing against a background of shim- 
mering beauty. On Sunday morning Dr. 
Boynton gave a refreshing and helpful address 
on the "Friendliness of the Sea." There have 
been no end of interesting people with whom 



124 THE OPINIONS OF 

to talk. There have been enticing books. 
And Clearfield has kept up a rapid fire of 
scintillating and penetrating talk. The other 
day I dropped down beside him just as he 
was at the end of a little book. I picked it 
up as he closed it, and found that it was What 
Happened to Europe, by Mr. Frank Vanderlip, 
recently president of the National City Bank. 
As I sat on the steamer chair next to John 
he began to speak: 

"This little volume of Frank Vanderlip's 
ought to have a wide hearing," he began. "It 
was written after a trip to a number of the 
countries of Europe. He had seen pretty much 
everything and he had talked with pretty 
much everybody, especially with the people 
of financial significance. Then he dictated this 
book on the five days' voyage home. It's like 
having a talk with him five days long. And 
he is one of the few men with whom I would 
be willing to talk for five days. He takes an 
unusually advanced position with regard to the 
relations of capital and labor. He analyzes 
the economic situation in practically every 
significant country in Europe. It is all easy 
talk as you read it. But you feel the trained 
mind back of it all the while. You feel the 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 125 

problem of Europe after the war as you have 
not been able to feel it before. And you feel 
the splendid opportunity of America. Of 
course it is a banker's book. And that means 
that the whole problem is seen from a special- 
ized mind. But in many ways it is all the 
more significant for that very fact. Put the 
book into your pocket and read it before 
another day goes by." 

By this time the appeal of the sea was tug- 
ging at us both, and putting aside all thoughts 
of economic questions we paced the deck, 
watching all the colors on the water and 
dreaming idly such dreams as travelers upon 
the deep have dreamed since the first time 
when a bark ventured in timid audacity out 
of the sight of land. 



126 THE OPINIONS OF 



LITERARY HOSPITALITY 

"T 7|[ THAT are you going to do to-night?" 

V V I asked of John Clearfield as we 
walked out of his office together. 

*T am going to give a dinner party," replied 
John at once with a little twinkle in his eye. 
He kept looking at me whimsically. I walked 
at his side waiting for him to speak. 

"Don't you want to know the names of some 
of the guests .f^" he queried with a chuckle. 

"It's evidently a very mysterious dinner 
party," I parried. "But you needn't think 
you can surprise me. Your human contacts 
are as varied as the kinds of people there are 
in the world. Perhaps you are going to imitate 
the London lady who gave a party to deadly 
enemies. I understand that her party was a 
great success." 

The Man of Books and Men laughed at that. 

"No, it's nothing so audacious as a get- 
together of people who hate each other," he 
said. "It's to be a party of books. My wife 
is away. The children are off for the week- 
end. I am going to put a row of books in 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 127 

front of me, and have a perfectly good time 
with them while I eat my dinner. Then I'm 
going to browse about with them for a couple 
of quiet hours." 

"Have you selected these literary guests?" I 
inquired. 

"Yes, and they are all good friends of mine. 
They are more or less recent books. I have 
read them all and I have marked them. But I 
want to have some more conversation with 
them before I put them in their places on my 
shelves." 

We walked along briskly for a moment. 

"Now, I think I am ready for their names," 
I suggested at length. 

John wrinkled his brow for a second. Then 
he said: 

"First of all, there is President Tucker's 
My Generation. It is a thoroughly manly 
book. It comes from a sturdy, upstanding life. 
There is keen, clear thinking. There is the 
action of a steady and energetic ethical life-. 
And there is a habit of thinking in calm, large 
ways about significant themes. I like to think 
that it is quite like New England to produce 
men of Tucker's type. They give you a sense 
of stability in a shifting and transitional age." 



128 THE OPINIONS OF 

We moved through a bit of congestion as we 
crossed a street and after that John continued: 

"The second book is John Spargo's Bol- 
shevism. You know the work of Spargo thor- 
oughly well. I think you first called my atten- 
tion to his life of Karl Marx years ago. And 
you remember how sane and wise was his 
book on Syndicalism. Was it you who told 
me that years ago he used to work with Lloyd- 
George in Hugh Price Hughes' mission in 
London, and that in these dim days long ago 
they sometimes shared the same bed after the 
hours of work? The book on Bolshevism is 
based upon unusual knowledge of the whole 
radical movement and its literature, and much 
of it represents actual contact with Soviet 
documents. Nowhere does one see more 
clearly that Bolshevism is a new kind of tyranny 
with a minority of a small group in control 
instead of the Czar. The book is full of social 
passion. But it gives small comfort to the 
sentimental American who would play with 
Bolshevism as a child might play with a new 
toy. The fact that the book is written by a 
socialist makes it all the more impressive." 

"Is poetry to be represented at this dinner 
party .f^" I asked. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 129 

The eyes of my friend were very bright now. 

"Make no mistakes about that," he rephed. 
"Marguerite Wilkinson's New Voices is to be an 
honored guest. That is a real book. It is an 
unusual anthology. And the chapters of crit- 
icism and discussion are nearly always sane 
and wise. Sometimes they are very clever. 
There is some needless condescension toward 
Alfred Noyes. But you get an actual intro- 
duction to the ideas, the ideals, and the work 
of the men and women who make up the 
group. You may not be willing to take them 
quite as seriously as they take themselves. 
But you cannot deny their power." 

We were really warming to the subject and 
I breathed with a little special relish as I 
watched my friend getting deeper into his 
theme. But just here another friend joined us. 
And so I never learned about the other guests 
at this dinner of books. 



130 THE OPINIONS OF 



DR. KELMAN AND AMERICA 

JOHN CLEARFIELD had just been at- 
tending a University Convocation where 
Dr. Kelman had spoken. It was his first 
hearing of the brilliant Edinburgh minister who 
had come to make New York his home, and I 
was eager to know his impressions. We were 
walking along the shore of the Lake together 
with the University buildings on one side and 
the many-toned colors of the water on the 
other. 

"I was prepared to hear a Scotchman. I 
was not prepared to hear a Greek," John be- 
gan. I interrupted with a chuckle. 

"You really did find him out in one hear- 
ing," I said. "He is a fifth-century Athenian 
preaching the gospel of beauty in a twentieth- 
century Presbyterian church." 

John weighed the words for a moment. 

"Yesterday I would have laughed at you 
for that," he said. "I would have declared 
that the combination was impossible. But 
to-day I admit that you are right. After all, 
I ought not to be so completely surprised. For 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 131 

there was Robert Louis Stevenson. His style 
is chaste Greek art. And the land which pro- 
duced him produced Dr. Kelman." 

"You will not be forgetting," I interjected, 
"that one of the very best books about Steven- 
son, according to high critical authority, comes 
from the pen of Dr. Kelman. And you will 
not forget Professor Butcher and his nobly 
Greek spirit, or the tradition which he repre- 
sents." 

"It's all true," replied John. "Just the same 
there is something a bit amazing about the 
combination of John Knox and Matthew 
Arnold." 

We stood for a moment looking out over 
the Lake. There were wonderful efiFects of 
dancing color, and we let the merry beauty 
of it enter our own lives before we continued 
our conversation. 

The Man of Books and Men at length took 
up the thread of talk again. 

"I see clearly enough the thing for which 
Dr. Kelman stands," he said. "Unconsciously 
he was describing himself to-day when he 
spoke of the type of mind which reconciles 
the Hebrew love of righteousness and the Greek 
love of beauty. That is precisely what he is 



132 THE OPINIONS OF 

doing. But what is he going to accomplish 
in America? And what is he going to do in 
New York?" 

My friend was warming to his theme. 

"Of course it is just what New York needs," 
he said. "And it is undoubtedly the next 
step in the unfolding of American culture. 
But are we clear-sighted enough to know it? 
And are we willing to let a man guide us in 
that notable fashion from a pulpit?" 

"There have been pulpits in America with 
a far-flung power," I remarked. 

"Oh, we're ready enough to admit the pulpit 
to moral leadership in our hours of real aware- 
ness. And we expect spiritual distinction like 
that of Dr. Jowett, at least we want it. But 
we have been rather provincial. Are we ready 
to admit that Christianity is to provide that 
larger synthesis where taste and character meet? 
Are we willing to have our subtlest problems 
of aesthetics solved by a spiritual prophet?" 

We walked along the shore musing for a 
little while. Then my friend spoke again. 

"I believe he can do it," he said. "One feels 
at once that he is a real preacher. The faith 
once delivered to the saints will have notable 
and distinguished expression in his minstry. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 133 

You feel at once that he must be a great pastor. 
He will know his people and they will love 
him. I have been hearing things about that 
side of his work in New York already. He 
has deep social passion. And he will make 
articulate the characteristic aspirations of those 
whose eyes are shining with the dream of an 
accomplished brotherhood. And while he is 
doing all this, and while many people do not 
know that he is doing more than this, he will 
be pouring the richness of his high Greek 
spirit into the town and into the nation where 
he lives and works. Gradually those who are 
ready for the word he has to say will hear it. 
And out over the land his influence will go. 
I do not think it will be very dramatic. It 
may not arouse an unusual amount of com- 
ment. But a new quality will diffuse itself 
through American life because he is here. He 
will invite us to the nuptuals of goodness and 
beauty, and we will eagerly accept the invi- 
tation " 

I was smiling quietly as my friend finished. 

"One would think you had read his books. 
I could almost hear echoes of Among Famous 
Books and The Road of Life as you were speak- 
ing," I declared. 



134 THE OPINIONS OF 

"I have not read them," said John. "But 
you may be sure I will." 

"Then if you want to see Dr. Kelman attack- 
ing contemporary world-problems, have a look 
at Social Aspects of International Christianity," 
I added. John did not hesitate with his reply. 
"I'll read everything he has published," he said. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 135 



SOCIAL UNREST IN ENGLAND 
AND AMERICA 

THE Bank Holiday found John Clearfield 
and me at Margate by the sea. No- 
body would suggest that it is a very fashion- 
able resort. But perhaps for that very reason 
it is all the more typical of the movement of 
English life. We mingled with the crowds light of 
step and bright of face. It was a brave and merry 
company of people. We knew a little of how 
brave, for we knew that there was pain enough in 
the hearts hidden away by the bright faces. But 
the war must not conquer England, not even as a 
memory, and so the groups of people listening to 
the band or dancing on the green allowed no 
telltale stories to get into their faces. 

"This doesn't look like social revolution, 
does it?" queried John as we looked out on 
the moving masses of people. 

"England does not have revolutions," 1 ven- 
tured in reply. "England marches right to the 
edge of the precipice, and then just in time 
faces about and marches the other way." 

John smiled. 



136 THE OPINIONS OF 

"That is good history," he said. "I wonder 
if it is good prophecy." 

Neither of us spoke for a httle while. The Man 
of Books and Men was evidently busy with his 
thoughts. At length he turned toward me. 

"The character of a nation really speaks 
when the moment of acute social crisis comes," 
he said. "If there is solid self-control and a 
dependable sense of values, the movement is 
held in a steady hand. Even a man who wants 
an entirely new division of the treasures of the 
world if he is a clear thinker and has poise 
and perspective, realizes that you do not bring 
in a better day by destroying the thing which 
you would like to divide. Our first interest is 
to preserve civilization. The next is to place 
its values where they really belong. And with 
all the wild talk one hears in England, I think 
the English worker sees this. He will not kill 
the goose that lays the golden egg. About the 
situation in America it is less easy to get a 
dependable answer. Regarding the old Amer- 
ican stock, I think we can make the same 
assertion I have made about England. But 
what about the million a year of immigrants 
coming into the country before the war.^^ AVhat 
are they really thinking about? Do they see 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 137 

that we must preserve the structure if anybody 
is to live in it? Or do they want to destroy it 
just because they think the wrong people are in 
possession? Are the processes of Americaniza- 
tion and education going on rapidly enough to 
produce in our mixed population a steadying 
sense of those values which must be preserved 
whatever comes and whatever goes?" 

We were walking along above the white 
cliffs now. John seized my arm for a moment. 

"That's what you educators are about, isn't 
it? Are you getting the steadying influences 
of knowledge spread through all classes? Are 
you really saving your country?" 

"There are people who would say you are 
talking like a reactionary," I reminded him. 

"About as reactionary as a fire engine!" John 
flashed forth. "No one knows better than 
you that I have no brief for social injustice. 
I want every home to be sanitary. I want 
every worker to have a living wage. I want 
every child to be well fed and well clothed. 
I want an ample education to be within the 
reach of all. I want life to be organized so 
that the largest and fullest opportunity shall 
come to every person everywhere. I am will- 
ing to work for it. I am willing to fight for it. 



138 THE OPINIONS OF 

But I am not willing to tear the world to pieces 
with a vague hope that a better world will some- 
how be made out of the fragments. I will not 
do it myself. And I will not stand by and let 
other people do it. Not if I can prevent them." 

My friend spoke with a decision which put 
steel in his voice. Then he threw back liis 
head and drew in a deep breath. 

"The American spirit must speak with us as 
the English spirit must speak here," he said. 
"And it will not fail to be heard when the day 
of need arrives. The American spirit has as 
its very genius an enthusiasm for reform. But 
it is absolutely firm in its opposition to re- 
leasing forces which only tear down. It is the 
foe of social disintegration. Is that spirit 
moving royally through the hearts of the people 
who live in our land? A man's head lifts 
puzzling questions. But his heart tells him 
that even with the newcomers the spirit of 
liberty will not turn into the spirit of license. 
Unrest there is. But unrest will not turn into 
madness. That is our faith. And we must 
justify it by spreading the true American 
spirit over all the ranges of American life." 

After that for a long time we stood looking 
out at the sea. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 139 



THE POWER OF HOPE 

«|-^0 you know," said John Clearfield, 
1 U "that some contemporary writers are 
^ busy creating a psychology of failure?"^^ Then 
i without waiting for a reply he went on: "It was 
all put in a sentence the other day by a gifted 
Indian who said to John Drinkwater, *Our poets 
praise life. Your poets revile life.' The cold and 
distinguished cynicism which is the characteristic 
product of a good many men of the pen leaves 
a man depleted of just that zest in life out of 
which all good work really comes. The songs of 
hope help to create the power of achievement. 
The songs of wailing gloom tend to rob a man 
of the power of action." 

The Man of Books and Men leaned back in 
his chair and I saw that he was warming to 
his theme. „ 

"There is a discontent which acts as a spur, 
he went on. "But it is a discontent which is, 
after all, based on belief in life and a sound 
criticism of oneself. There is a discontent 
which acts as a deadening influence on all 
one's creative powers. That is based upon 



140 THE OPINIONS OF 

an utter revolt from life and a certain soft 
complacency as regards oneself. When you 
criticize yourself because you are not measuring 
up to the opportunities which life offers, you 
are in a really wholesome and promising con- 
dition. When you criticize the world because 
it somehow fails to fling open all its doors to 
your amazingly unusual personality, you are 
in a state of mind which has no promise either 
of character or achievement." 

"But there are terrible conditions in the 
world," I interrupted. 

"No doubt that is true," replied John. 
"But have you never noticed that it is not 
the people in terrible conditions who are the 
wailing pessimists .^^ Very often they surprise 
us by their cheery hopefulness. It is the well 
fed and the well clothed who come to the 
hours of dull and heavy lassitude when life 
seems to be an entire delusion and a snare. 
Those who suffer from eating too much rich 
food are infinitely more misanthropic than 
those who suffer from having too little. Some- 
times it seems as if only the poor knew the 
real and perpetual secret of laughter. Gilbert 
Chesterton has made all that clear and con- 
vincing enough in his delightful little book on 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 141 

Charles Dickens. No end of the greatest of 
the songs of hope have come out of hardship." 
" *Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem,' " I 
quoted. " 'Cry unto her that her warfare is 
accomplished.' " 

"Precisely," said John. "That great out- 
burst was written in exile, and the sad loneli- 
ness of a foreign land could not prevent the 
prophet from singing with joy." 

"Do you remember Samuel Crothers' clever 
saying that a good many comfortable Amer- 
icans need the new commandment, 'Thou shalt 
not sulk'? " I asked. 

"Oh, Crothers sees it clearly enough," replied 
my friend. "He sees this and no end of other 
things. I wish everybody read his essays. 
But it goes even deeper than he has seen. 
There is a great cosmic joy in life which sweeps 
in high spirits over terrible and disillusioning 
things straight to the goal. And as it goes by 
it deals mighty blows at evil institutions from 
which they cannot recover. It is the quality 
of vital men and a vital age. There is a Homeric 
grandeur about it. There is a complete eman- 
cipation from the delicate decadence of small 
and anaemic minds. The really vital men and 
the really vital nations feel hope emerging even 



142 THE OPINIONS OF 

in hours saturated with gloom. The health of 
the world and the hope of the world are joined 
in eternal wedlock. Hopelessness is a sure 
sign of disease mental, moral, or spiritual. 
And the hope of mighty health has the prom- 
ise of good days in it. After all anybody can 
doubt. The heroes are the men who believe. 
Anybody can be discouraged. The strong 
makers of the world are the men who hope." 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 143 



TWO DANGERS AND TWO 
OPPORTUNITIES 

THE other evening I met John Clearfield 
walking on the Thames Embankment. 
It was a glorious night, and the moment I saw 
my friend I knew that he was alive to the 
finger tips, and I suspected that he was full 
of some subject concerning which he wished to 
talk. He promptly seized me by the arm and 
soon we were walking up and down by the 
side of the river. 

"I have been thinking," John began, "and 
I have really reached some conclusions." 

"If the case is analyzed and the facts are 
tabulated, let me hear the result," I replied. 

We were turning near Waterloo Bridge at 
the moment. John cast his eye about, drink- 
ing in the whole scene. Then he went on. 

"As far as I can see individual men and 
women are confronted by two dangers and 
two opportunities. If we can avoid the dan- 
gers and use the opportunities to the full, 
we will have a spirit in which we can deal 
with our practical problems in a sure and ade- 



144 THE OPINIONS OF 

quale fashion, and there will be better days 
ahead." 

"Please begin with the dangers, so that this 
conversation won't come to an anti-climax," I 
interjected. 

"That is exactly what I am going to do," 
said Clearfield. "Didn't you notice that this 
was the order in which I spoke of them?" 
He moved his hand along his stick as if he 
were about to extract some idea from that 
inarticulate piece of wood. Then he turned 
and looked me full in the eye. 

"Our first danger," he said, "is that we will 
turn a world-wide weariness into a world-wide 
misanthropy. Our state of mind is at the 
moment the most dangerous thing in the life 
of the world. We see everything with tired 
eyes. We read our own utter war weariness 
into every problem we analyze. There are 
elements of grave seriousness in the situation 
to be sure. But there is nothing in the situa- 
tion so serious as is our attitude toward it. 
If we were fresh and full of energy, we would 
swing through diflSculties which it now seems 
we cannot surmount. But the very moment 
we see that our own weariness, the weariness 
of all the world after the Great War, is creep- 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 145 

ing in and affecting our judgment on every 
subject, that moment we will begin to get a 
new perspective. We will begin to make 
allowance for the pessimism of tired minds, and 
we will make a start at getting a more whole- 
some view. The second danger is closely akin 
to the first. And it is very near and very 
acute. It is the danger of turning a world- 
wide nervous reaction into a world-wide ethical 
reaction. The nerves of the world have been 
held tense and rigid during the testing and 
terrible years of the war. And how splendidly 
they did service ! I never can praise enough the 
quiet good cheer of the English, for instance, 
in the worst days of the war. But it was at 
a great physical price. The nerves held taut 
for so long became mutinous. And after the 
armistice, the inevitable reaction came. Now, 
there is nothing tragically dangerous about 
this, providing we all understand it and meet 
it with a depreciatory shrug, or best of all with 
a sense of humor. But if we allow ourselves to 
get under the weight of it, if we come to take a 
jaundiced view of life, and at last become the 
complete victims of our own nervous reaction, 
lose hope and allow an ethical reaction to fol- 
low, there will be tragedy indeed. We need 



146 THE OPINIONS OF 

to understand that in spite of all the prob- 
lems the thing you fear is never as dangerous 
as fear itself, and the physical reaction must 
be met with a quiet patience which accepts 
it as an ugly but necessary experience and quite 
refuses to build out of it a despairing or law- 
less view of life. The nerves of all the world 
will behave properly again if we only give them 
time." 

We were in a position from which West- 
minster Abbey was distinctly visible. In the 
soft evening light the towers seemed a noble 
summons. There was a quiet dignity in my 
friend's voice as he went on: 

"Then there are two opportunities. One has 
to do with the spirit of man. In the worst 
days of the war fathers and mothers and fight- 
ing men found that they had inner resources 
of which they had no real knowledge before. 
Those resources remain. And going beneath 
perplexity and weariness and nervous tension 
we must find those deep wells of vitality which 
will carry us through the diflSculties of peace 
as they carried us through the tortures of war. 
The other opportunity those Abbey towers 
seem to be trying to make articulate. The 
very secrets of vitality a man finds hidden in 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 147 

his own life suggest vast and unexplored con- 
nections of the human spirit. And in the 
hour when a man learns that he can retreat 
into the strength of God he has learned the 
most amazing thing about our human expe- 
rience. We may need new and living phrases 
to tell its story. Or we may experience it 
without any phrases to tell its meaning at all. 
But if we have come to the place of deep and 
poignant need, and in that hour have found 
our way into the very reality and steadiness 
and poise of the life of the Master of the world 
everything is changed. That kind of mysticism 
saves lost causes. And it transforms the life 
of men. Quite simply, and all the more eagerly 
because there is not a touch of professional 
quality in the words, I am ready to say that 
the greatest opportunity of the age is a redis- 
covery of God." 

We stood looking over the river. We 
watched the lights in the Houses of Parliament. 
We looked again at the stately Abbey with 
its tribute to the dead and its immortal hope. 
Then we walked away in a silent comradeship 
which needed no word of speech. 



148 THE OPINIONS OF 



VICTORY AND PEACE 

JOHN CLEARFIELD and I were walking 
away from the House of Commons on 
Monday night, July 21. We had just been 
listening to the debate on the Peace Treaty 
and we had heard practically all of it. At the 
moment, however, John was speaking of the 
Victory procession which we had witnessed on 
the Saturday before. 

"Will you ever forget the cold austere 
strength of the face of Marshal Foch?" he asked, 
and then without waiting for a reply, he 
went on, "And can't you see now the sturdy, 
virile figure of Sir Douglas Haig?" 

"And the hearty, friendly way of General 
Pershing as he smiled at the British who lined 
the streets," I broke in. "He seemed to be 
looking right into the eyes of the people and 
liking each one of them individually." 

"And were not the American boys superb?" 
John went on. "They seemed to have the 
very momentum of success in their swinging 
steps. You felt that there was solid endurance 
in the French. But you felt, too, how much 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 149 

they had passed through as you watched their 
solemn faces. The Httle Belgians gave you a 
thrilling sense of wonderful days in 1914. The 
Italians looked as temperamental and music 
loving as they always do when you really see 
their faces. The Chinese and the Japanese 
made you thinli of many things. The hosts 
from all over the British empire made you 
think what a great thing it is that all that 
far-flung power is in the hands of a world- 
wide democracy." 

"What about Mr. Devlin's speech tonight.^" 
I asked. This Irishman with the gift of his 
race for oratory had made a powerful appeal 
for Ireland in the course of the Peace Treaty 
debate. 

"The problem about Ireland," replied the 
Man of Books and Men, sententiously, "is not 
what Great Britain is willing to give. It is a 
question of what Ireland is willing to receive. 
Lord Robert Cecil was right to-night when he 
spoke with deep and evident feeling of Great 
Britain as a democracy." 

"Lord Robert Cecil got a wonderful hear- 
ing," I observed. 

"Everybody is watching him," rephed John. 
"One of these days he may be prime minister." 



150 THE OPINIONS OF 

"And what did you think of Lloyd-George, 
to-night?" I asked. 

"It was a very characteristic piece of speak- 
ing," repHed my friend. "He was human and 
magnetic. As far as the mere speaking qual- 
ity was concerned he really quite mastered the 
House again and again. Men like to hear him 
talk even if they do not agree with him. And 
it is hard for them not to like to hear him talk 
even when they do not feel that they can trust 
him. I do not mean at all to put myself with 
that group. I believe he has a real and honest 
mind trying to find its way about in a difficult 
time, and to express itself in an effective way. 
I cannot say that I quite always like his 
methods. But I believe in the essential earnest- 
ness of the man. He was sometimes adroit 
to-night. But once and again he rose to high 
levels. And the figure of the treaty as a 
lighthouse was noble enough and lofty enough 
in its suggestion to fit the occasion." 

By this time we had reached Trafalgar 
Square and stood looking up at the figure on 
the summit of the column. John Clearfield 
was drinking in the whole scene with evident 
delight. Suddenly he seized me by the arm: 

"Man, do you reahze it.'^ England and 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 151 

America together can bring in the new day 
for the world. We must stick together. We 
must understand each other as we have never 
understood each other. And together we must 
meet the challenge of the need of all the world." 
We walked along in silence after that. But 
both of us were thinking of the responsibility 
of the English-speaking peoples for the welfare 
of all mankind. 



152 THE OPINIONS OF 



THE SPEECH WHICH WE BROUGHT 
FROM ENGLAND 

ONE hot day in August I found John 
Clearfield sitting in a chair in Regent's 
Park. I walked quickly beside him and stood 
looking down into his face. 

"Why this far-off, intent look?" I inquired. 

John Clearfield started up quickly, then 
smiled his characteristic welcome. I sat down 
beside him. 

"I was thinking of the English language," 
he said. 

"You seem to have found it very engrossing," 
I replied a little flippantly, I fear. "I have 
thought of it too on occasion, but hardly with 
your look of mystical enthusiasm." 

"That's just it," repHed the Man of Books 
and Men. "If you really think of it you fall 
into poetry at once. Really, it isn't a language 
at all, it is a great series of caravans carrying 
all the treasures of civilization across the 
years. When a man takes the English lan- 
guage to a new country, without ever knowing 
it he carries all of English history and all of 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 153 

English tradition and all the moral and 
spiritual idealism of the race. The English 
language condenses and makes portable that 
which you could not carry in a million ships. 
I was just seeing it all as you came up. And 
you brought me back to Regent's Park with a 
sudden jolt," John finished a little ruefully. 

"All that ought to have something to do 
with the friendly and sympathetic relations 
between Great Britain and America," I ven- 
tured. 

Clearfield sprang to his feet. 

"It has everything to do with it," he de- 
clared. "A language literally carries about the 
soul of a nation. And in speaking the English 
language we have taken into our national life 
the very soul of England. We cannot even 
condemn England without using words whose 
very judicial quality comes from centuries of 
English striving and achieving of fair play. 
And our whole intellectual life is fed by the 
living phrases which have come leaping from 
the most notable English experience. Shake- 
speare far more than we know has made 
Englishmen of us all. I mean that the way 
of looking at life, the standards, the feeling 
a-bout ^ million subtle things which have to 



154 THE OPINIONS OF 

do with passing human experience feel the 
impress of Shakespeare's interpretation when 
we least remember it. Charles Lamb has 
given a touch of gentle and whimsical humor 
to the whole English-speaking race. Milton 
has written a stern and austere sense of the 
sublime into the lives of all the men who use 
his tongue. Men feel it who have never heard 
the name of Milton. Browning has molded 
the intellectual life of multitudes of young 
men and women as far as their thinking of the 
supremest matters of existence is concerned. 
Carlyle has given the behests of conscience the 
flash of lightning and the roll of thunder. 
Matthew Arnold has given to English speech 
and English life an added quality of chaste 
and beautiful restraint. And out from English 
life it has gone into all the world of English- 
speaking peoples. Tennyson has set to music 
the most characteristic life of a century and 
he has done it for America as well as for Eng- 
land. All of these influences go far beyond 
those who are actual students and readers. 
They press their way right through the undis- 
ciplined and untutored life. You can take it 
as an axiom that you can never explain the 
thoughts and the speech of an uneducated man 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 155 

who uses any civilized language without re- 
ferring to the names of many authors of whom 
he has never heard." 

John sat down again. Then he went on 
talking : 

"But in one way the most wonderful thing 
about a language is the fashion in which it 
harvests into its own great barns the very 
most vital meaning of all the thought and 
struggle of all the people who use it. Lan- 
guage is democratic in the sense that every 
man who uses it has a vote. Unconsciously 
to himself he is affecting the common usage. 
And that love of freedom, that growing ideal- 
ism, that belief in the rights of men which is 
enshrined so deeply in English life and character 
is part of the very warp and woof of our lan- 
guage." 

"Is it all English then?" I asked. "Have 
we no share in it.^^" 

Once more John was on his feet. 

"We have a great share in it. Never doubt 
that," he replied. "If you do doubt it read 
the utterances of Abraham Lincoln. Or better 
still feel your way into the everyday American 
mind and inspect the live and telling phrases 
which have come rich and potent out of Amer- 



156 THE OPINIONS OF 

ican life. It is our language, too. But just as 
we must speak the same tongue, so we must 
live the same life And for the sake of the 
future of the world we must learn how to 
supplement each other, each building part of 
the common structure of speech and life. The 
deepest and most sacred of ties bind us to- 
gether. We must not be put asunder." 

At the moment a boy came by with some 
copies of the Westminster Gazette. We each 
took a paper, and that ended conversation 
for the time. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 157 



THE MIDDLE WEST 

THE other day I ran into John Clearfield's 
oflSee just in time to catch him as he 
was about to go out for luncheon. Soon we 
were walking together down Michigan Avenue 
toward John's favorite club. My friend was 
full of the zest of being back at his desk again 
after his summer in England. I could see as 
he looked out over the Lake that he was com- 
paring the scene on this clear, cool, invigorating 
day with some of the scenes upon which he 
had gazed in various English towns a few weeks 

before. 

"It's home again, home again, 
America for me,'* 

quoted John blithely as we walked along. 
Then, turning toward me in his quick charac- 
teristic way, he said: "Do you know that 
somebody is going to discover the Middle 
West one of these days.f^" 

"What's to prevent the Middle West from 
discovering itself?" I asked in return. 

John smiled a little. "Why not?" he said. 
"In any event the day when the giant in the 



158 THE OPINIONS OF 

Mississippi Valley discovers that he is a giant 
will be a significant day for the world." 

We walked along for a moment, moving in 
and out among the throngs of people. Then 
as we got into a clear space for a moment 
John spoke again. 

"Do you know what an inland empire this 
is?" he asked. "The majority of the people 
in the United States are in the Mississippi 
Valley. Its grain is a vast treasure with 
strength and life for American men. Its 
minerals are waiting to be built into the civ- 
ilization which is to be. Its systems of trans- 
portation are such highways for travel as 
stagger the imagination. And all this is in- 
creasing and increasing in meaning. The 
Mississippi Valley is a part of the great world. 
Its products reach the ends of the earth. And 
the men of business in the Middle West are 
beginning to think in the terms of the indus- 
trial and economic life of the whole world. 
They have been shaken out of their provin- 
cialism." 

At the moment we were separated by jostling 
masses of people. When we found ourselves 
walking side by side again John went on 

"The war painted a good deal of the world 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 159 

black. The Mississippi Valley contains the 
greatest mass of able and productive men un- 
disturbed by the world-wide cataclysm to be 
found on the planet. The sanity of the world 
is in a real measure to be restored by the men 
of the Mississippi Valley." 

Clearfield had quickened his pace a little. 

"Do you know," he said, almost vehemently, 
"that the need of the hour is the testing of 
ideas by a deep and practical experience of 
life.^ The destructive radical must be met by 
a wholesome mind with a large and significant 
business experience. The Middle West offers 
that. It will be progressive without being 
destructive. It will have visions without be- 
coming visionary. It will be as conservative 
as the things which ought to be held steady 
and as radical as the things which ought to 
be changed." 

Just at this moment we joined some friends 
at the entrance of the club and so the con- 
versation went no further. 



160 THE OPINIONS OF 



CONTEMPORARY POETRY 

THE other day I overheard John Clearfield 
talking with a friend who wanted to do 
some reading in connection with recent move- 
ments in poetry. I jotted down some of the 
things which he said, and here they are: 

"The best way to begin is by reading Pro- 
fessor William Lyon Phelps's The Advance of 
English Poetry in the Twentieth Century," he 
said. "Phelps is bright and clever and human 
and wholesome. He keeps his mind near to 
the place where you live, and he gives you 
all sorts of interesting facts and estimates. 
You will want to keep his book about for 
reference after you have read it. He is not 
the apostle of the old and he is not the prophet 
of the new. He has a hearty, hospitable mind 
and he welcomes you quite as he welcomes the 
new poets while he keeps a place for the old. 
Then I would get into Marguerite Wilkinson's 
New Voices. This is an anthology with pages 
and pages of informing comment and inter- 
pretation thrown in. Usually Mrs. Wilkinson 
is judicial. But she can be quite color-blind. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 161 

as is revealed by some of the things which she 
says of Alfred Noyes. You will find many a 
poem you will not want to forget in the anthol- 
ogy, and you will be carried along in the trail 
of a really thoughtful and appreciating mind." 

"And where will I find the book of the 
advocate?" asked the seeker after bibliograph- 
ical material. 

"Why not try Louis Untermeyer.f^" Clear- 
field threw back with a chuckle. "The New 
Era in American Poetry is written with ample 
knowledge, with infinite assurance, and once 
and again with the cut of a really revealing 
phrase. There is actual criticism in it, and 
you will have a sense of the new movements 
as they are felt from within. Then I would 
go right on to Professor John Livingstone 
Lowes's Convention and Revolt in Poetry. 
This new Harvard teacher knows pretty much 
everything in English literature from the time 
of Chaucer — especially Chaucer — and you see 
the new movements in the light of a rather 
large historical perspective. There is wit 
and crisp energy and much of the merry, 
quiet laughter of the mind in the writing of 
Professor Lowes. And you will feel that 
many of the principles which he elucidates 



162 THE OPINIONS OF 

have wide application to other matters as well 
as to poetry.'* 

John Clearfield leaned back in his chair for 
a moment. Then he spoke again: 

"On the whole none of these new people is 
more worth knowing than Vachel Lindsay. 
Take all his books along with you. Robinson 
may have a more finished technique. Frost 
may be able to turn a word into a stone so 
that you feel its hardness; Amy Lowell may 
turn phrases into bits of clear and icy crystal; 
Masters may forget that houses have com- 
fortable living rooms and go out to make the 
barnyard vocal; these and many others may 
do definitely effective things, but the promise 
which is in Lindsay's daring democracy has 
the future of American letters at the heart 
of it. Read every bit of his prose and every 
bit of his verse. He is the minstrel of a cos- 
mopolitan commonwealth and he believes that 
a little Middle Western city is inarticulate and 
not empty, so he sets himself about giving 
it a voice." 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 163 



CONCERNING ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

THROUGH the rain I swung down White- 
hall toward Parliament Square. When I 
pulled up beside Westminster Abbey I found 
myself on the edge of a crowd of people whose 
enthusiasm the downpour had been unable to 
dampen. Just as I reached the spot the flags 
parted and were lowered and the statue of 
Abraham Lincoln stood forth, gazing with sad 
wise scrutiny at the Abbey, where so many of 
England's great slumber. It was a mighty 
moment, and very quickly and very deeply 
one felt many things as he gazed at the noble 
statue of the most notable man America has 
produced. One listened reverently to "The 
Star-Spangled Banner" and "God Save the 
King," and then the choir sang "The Battle 
Hymn of the Republic," while past and present 
seemed to meet in the most curious and vital 
fashion. 

As I turned to move away I caught the face 
of John Clearfield, emerging from his tightly 
buttoned raincoat. It was good to look at 
that face. Clearfield was alive to every deep 



164 THE OPINIONS OF 

and subtle meaning of the occasion, and a 
flash of something of Lincoln's own tender 
strength was in his eyes. 

Soon the two of us were walking toward 
the Thames embankment, quite ignoring the 
rain. For a while neither of us spoke. But 
John managed to make the silence very preg- 
nant. At last he turned to me with one vigor- 
ous sentence: 

"That one man — Lincoln — justifies the exist- 
ence of the United States of America," he said. 

Again we were silent for a while as we 
strode along. Then I ventured on a query: 

"How are we going to keep him in the minds 
of the people who keep being born and growing 
up and making the future.'^" 

Clearfield turned the matter over in his 
mind. 

"Books will help," he said. "Have you read 
Irving Bachellor's Man for the Ages? There is 
a story in which the buried past lives and you 
see Lincoln in the making. Every young fellow 
in America, and many an older one, ought to 
read Morgan's Abraham Lincoln, the Boy and 
the Man. It makes no pretense. But Mr. 
Morgan has covered a vast amount of material 
and Lincoln lives in the book. An English- 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 165 

man, of course, should make the approach 
through Lord Charnwood's sympathetic Life. 
And it is not a bad thing for an American to 
see Lincoln through English eyes. The chap 
who is ambitious for any sort o£ leadership 
should read Rothschild's Lincoln, Master of 
Men. These are a good start. Then the 
readers will go on to the massive volumes 
which offer such abundant materials in biog- 
raphies which have the authority of long and 
careful investigation. Nicolay and Hay and 
Ida M. Tarbell have put us well in their debt." 

The Man of Books and Men swung about 
and we moved back toward the Houses of 
Parliament. As we walked along he was say- 
ing softly to himself the lines of Vachel Lind- 
say's poem, "Would I could rouse the Lincoln 
in you all." 

"Lindsay understands Lincoln," he said. 
Then he added, "And Lindsay knows a good 
deal about democracy." 



166 THE OPINIONS OF 



THE INTERNATIONAL VIEW 

JOHN CLEARFIELD had just been read- 
ing Tennyson-Turner's sonnet, "Letty's 
Globe." His eyes were glowing and it was 
easy to see that he was picturing to himself 
the tiny girl with the world held in her chubby 
hands. He wound up with a swing: 

"And while she hid all England with a kiss. 
Bright over Europe fell her golden hair." 

"I'll go to Letty for instruction in world- 
politics," he declared, merrily. "Her arms 
reach affectionately around the globe. Her 
golden hair falls over the continent nearest 
to her. And she hides her own land with a 
kiss." 

"You were talking to me the other day 
about the national view in politics," I sug- 
gested. 

The words were scarcely out of my mouth 
before John replied: 

"And, of course, the sort of national view 
I praised is in absolute harmony with the 
noblest sort of international view. That was 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 167 

clear enough to Letty." This last was said 
with a whimsical smile. 

"I know that you are ready to deduce the 
most abstruse principles of metaphysics from 
the most incidental remarks of Alice in Wonder- 
land," I retorted, "but suppose you forget 
the wisdom of the babies for a while and tell 
me exactly your own position about the inter- 
national situation." 

The Man of Books and Men looked at me 
with battle in his eye for a moment. I fully 
expected a dissertation on the relation of fairy 
tales to epistemology. But he gave his head a 
little toss as if dismissing an alluring tempta- 
tion. Then he said: 

"The world is one world. It is getting 
smaller every day. All the good things are 
contagious. All the bad things are contagious. 
And the only way for any part off the world 
to be safe is for all the world to be sate. When- 
ever you increase the capital of human good- 
ness in the farthest part of Asia, you make 
life surer and steadier in New York and Chi- 
cago. The national view insists that the 
United States shall decide its great problems 
in the light of the best good of the whole 
country. In doing that it is serving the whole 



168 THE OPINIONS OF 

world. For the stability and steadiness and 
justice of American institutions concern the 
last bit of organized life on the planet. When 
the best sort of violin is made you are serving 
not only the violin but the whole orchestra. 
I want America to be a splendid violin not 
only for its own sake, but also for the sake 
of that great orchestra of the world in which 
it is to play." 

"I believe all you say," I replied, "but are 
you not evading the really difficult problem? 
Are there not many cases where an inter- 
national view will demand that America do 
more than perfect its own life for the sake 
of all the world?" 

John was walking back and forth in the 
room now. 

"I'm not trying to escape under the cover 
of specious phrases," he declared. "I admit 
that you have touched the point of real diffi- 
culty. Are we willing to go out of our way 
to help the world? Are we willing to take 
risks for the sake of the world? Are we willing 
to become responsible for some of the back- 
ward peoples?" 

We sat quite silent for a few minutes after 
my friend had phrased these questions. When 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 169 

he spoke again it was very quietly and very 
seriously. 

"The great difficulty is that we ought to 
have begun to educate Americans a genera- 
tion ago in order to prepare them for the de- 
mands of to-day. There are books which every 
American should have read. There are news- 
papers whose discussions of the world's prob- 
lems should have been familiar to all our 
citizens. There is a large and ample habit 
of thought about mankind which should have 
been developed. We are thrust into the 
world's life with unprepared minds. The edu- 
cational work of the Missionary Education 
Movement is one of the few examples of an 
American attempt to train men to think 
thoughts as large as the problems of the world. 
Now we must work quickly. And we must 
work skillfully. In the meantime events them- 
selves are speaking. The old schoolmaster is 
hurrying us along at an amazing gait. The 
Christian Church ought to be a tremendous 
ally of all men of large and adequate vision. 
At all events we are to find the deepest meaning 
of nationality at last in international service." 



170 THE OPINIONS OF 



JOHN CLEARFIELD AT CHAUTAUQUA 

THE two of us were walking by the Lake 
on a charming evening early in July. 
We had just been listening to a delightful con- 
cert by the New York Symphony Orchestra 
just home from Europe after its triumphant 
tour. John always listens to music with a 
sort of rapt attention. I tell him that he 
partly creates the effect by the fashion in 
which he concentrates all his powers of appre- 
ciation. You have a feeling that he is one of 
the performers. Incidentally one has the 
same feeling about him in the grand stand at 
a baseball game. He seems to do the work 
of eighteen men while he watches. 

"Chautauqua is all the while talking to me," 
he said. 

"Suppose you translate the message which 
is given to your responsive mind," I replied. 

Clearfield smiled with a touch of irony in 
his smile, but he was not to be diverted. 

"Chautauqua is rather more than an idea," 
he continued. "It is an atmosphere. You 
feel the pressure of a very genuine intellectual 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 171 

curiosity. You feel the energy of a very real 
moral purpose. You sense the quality of a 
very definite spiritual aspiration. And a cer- 
tain noble hunger for beauty and charm is 
moving in the very air you breathe. It is all 
very democratic and there is a subtle sense 
that the invisible beauty of the mind and the 
heart is more permanent than the visible 
beauty of form. Chautauqua is a symbol of 
Democracy becoming conscious of its powers 
and its possibilities." 

"You have seemed to find a good deal of 
personal stimulus here," I observed. 

"No end of it," replied John, heartily. 
"Professor Richard Burton's lectures on Con- 
temporary Literature have been worth a long 
journey. He is a sort of incarnation of whole- 
someness. And there is constant and disci- 
plined literary discernment too I hope his 
books are widely read. I have bought two 
of them: one on Bernard Shaw and one on 
Charles Dickens." 

"That is a rather interesting combination," 
I chuckled. 

"But think of the daring of the man who 
ventured to write and to publish those two 
books. You know a good deal about Professor 



172 THE OPINIONS OF 

Burton just from the two titles. You know 
that he is simple and human enough to appre- 
ciate Dickens, and you know that he is clever 
and sophisticated enough to appreciate Shaw. 
I have had some good talks with him. He is 
ripe and has a mind richly stored, and he 
weds character and art in all his thinking." 

"I have seen you talking with that Cam- 
bridge scholar Dr. T. R. Glover," I threw 
out. 

"And isn't Glover a delight?" the Man of 
Books and Men retorted "He is a combina- 
tion of the tradition of the Puritans and some 
stately strains of Anglican tradition as this is 
felt at Cambridge. His mind is honest and 
very subtle, too. He is a technical scholar 
who has really lived in the periods which he 
has made his own. And he expresses himself 
with a skill which cuts right into your mind. 
Do you remember with what delight we read 
his Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman 
Empire? And how eagerly we read his vivid 
little book The Jesus of History?" 

"These Cambridge and Oxford men do know 
how to combine scholarship and culture," I 
replied. 

"Don't be discouraged, my friend," said 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 173 

Clearfield. "We'll emerge from our era of 
lifeless classification one of these days." 

We had turned back toward the Hotel by 
this time. There was a quiet beauty about 
the night which was making its way into our 
consciousness like the fragrance of a flower. 

"There is a fine spirit back of all this," said 
John. "One feels all the while in this attempt 
to bring the very best within the reach of the 
everyday American mind a belief in people 
and a belief in the future which is immensely 
heartening." 

There were still lights in the Amphitheater. 

"Think of the voices which have been heard 
there," ^id my friend. "And think of the 
fashion in which they are echoing over the 
United States." 

So we turned in, leaving the half mystic 
beauty of the night. 



174 THE OPINIONS OF 



"TUSITALA" 

THE Man of Books and Men was holding 
in his hand the one-volume life of Robert 
Louis Stevenson by Graham Balfour. He had 
been reading aloud one of the chapters on the 
South Sea Cruises. At a description of an 
address before the students of the training 
college of the London Mission in Malua I 
called a halt when he had read this sentence; 

"It was on this latter occasion that he was 
first introduced to the natives by the Rev. J. 
E. Newell as TusitalaM The Writer of Tales/ 
the name by which he was afterward most 
usually known in Samoa." 

"Wasn't that a name to express the very 
spirit of Stevenson?" I cried, going on at once. 
"And do you remember the delightful fashion 
in which Alfred Noyes uses it in *The Flower 
of Old Japan' ?" 

Clearfield smiled at my enthusiasm. 

"You have not forgotten the thrill with 
which you read Treasure Island, I see," he 
said. "And I quite agree with you that the 
gay spirit of high romance which dwelt in 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 175 

Stevenson made him a writer of tales which 
will long bewitch the imagination of men and 
of eager eyed boys and girls. I like to think 
of Stevenson making a real place for himself 
in the life of the South Sea people. It was 
the same gift of sympathy which made him 
such a teller of memorable tales which enabled 
him to do that. I like to think of his exhaust- 
less spirits in his long battle with disease. He 
knew a fine use of his mind by which he would 
take wings and escape from his room of illness 
into some fair and fascinating region. It was 
Tusitala who was able to do that. But there 
is another Stevenson who gives me endless 
pleasure. That is the Stevenson of the dis- 
tinguished observant essays couched in speech 
which is carved of gold and ivory. That is 
Tusitala too, but here the story-teller has laid 
aside his tales and has become the urbane and 
alert critic of men and things touching life 
gently and once and again finding a phrase 
which sparkles like a gem." 

John reached over to his table and picked 
up a copy of Memories and Portraits. As he 
turned its pages he went on talking: 

"Few men have ever given more care to 
style," he said. "Few men have ever felt a 



176 THE OPINIONS OP 

greater love for the right word. And few men 
have oftener found it. There were times when 
he ran off on a gallop of masterful speech when 
it seemed as if by a fine magic he could do 
anything with the language which he desired. 
Take this description of a certain brilliant 
conversationalist in the first essay on *Talk and 
Talkers/ *He doubles like a serpent, changes 
and flashes like a shaken kaleidoscope, trans- 
migrates bodily into the views of others, and 
so, in the twinkling of an eye and with a heady 
rapture, turns questions inside out and flings 
them empty before you on the ground.' Some- 
times he delights you by his subtle distinctions 
as when he speaks of a certain talker as having 
*a desire to hear, although not always to 
listen.' I like his literary criticisms with their 
sense of craftmanship, their large perspective, 
and their power of perception and leaping 
understanding phrases." 

I walked over to the shelf where Clearfield 
kept all the works of Stevenson. Every volume 
showed signs of frequent handling. ("A well- 
dressed book is a book for which one does not 
care. A book which has grown shabby is a 
book one loves," my friend sometimes said.) 
I thought as I looked at the books of the 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 177 

fashion in which sometimes John won a case 
through some sudden phrase which seemed to 
crystalHze his whole argument into inevitable 
strength. He never imitated an author, but 
he learned from all his favorites, and there 
was much which he had learned from Stevenson. 
Still standing by the case of books I spoke 
half whimsically. 

"I wonder what would happen if a hundred 
young ministers were to take to studying 
Stevenson seriously until they learned his 
own passion for potent expression." 

John's eyes gleamed. 

"If I were an intellectual Pope," he de- 
clared, "I would decree that every young 
minister should have a course in Tusitala." 



178 THE OPINIONS OF 



THE MAGIC OF GOOD BOOKS 

MY friend John Clearfield was in one of 
his expansive moods. He felt very 
much like talking. And he had no doubt at 
all of the importance of what he had to say. 
I knew the mood well, and so I sat in the 
chair opposite to him waiting expectantly. 

"Most men need two things," he began, 
oracularly. "They need a new motive and 
they need a new environment. Christianity 
gives them the new motive, and they have to 
find their own way into the new environment." 

"That sounds as if you would have every 
man move away from his old home as soon as 
he becomes a Christian," I chuckled. 

John smiled and frowned both at once in a 
way he had. 

"That is just what I do mean in spite of 
your flippancy," he said. "Of course, I do not 
mean that a man is to stop living in the same 
house and meeting the same people. I mean 
that the whole set of surroundings which his 
mind had recognized in the old days is to be 
changed. He is to find a new environment in 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 179 

the old house. He is to find new surroundings 
while meeting the same old faces. He is to 
find an environment in his mind which is to 
dominate the environment of his body." 

"That sounds like some sort of subtle new 
thought," I interjected. 

Clearfield gave a little grimace of distaste. 

"It's all as simple as A B C," he said. "If 
a man keeps reading good books and thinking 
the thoughts which they suggest the time 
comes at last when they literally create the 
mental and moral atmosphere in which he lives. 
There are some men who live so near to the 
Bible that the Bible dominates their thoughts 
and their feelings and their actions. What 
Isaiah says has a sort of access to their con- 
sciousness which is never obtained by the 
gossip of the next-door neighbor. And there 
are people who read so many great Christian 
biographies that they are literally surrounded 
by the Christian strength of the ages. Books 
have performed the feat of magic which has 
given them a new and beautiful environment." 

We sat silent for a moment. Then John 
went on. 

"Good books are the food of the Christian. 
The new motive will grow weak and vanish 



180 THE OPINIONS OF 

at last unless it is fed. And the books whieli 
take a man into the very atmosphere of Chris- 
tian Hving and Christian achievement are a 
supplement to the Christian motive of the 
most far-reaching power. To take a man out 
of an unpleasant environment is merely to 
avoid his problem. To give him a masterfully 
good book which will enable him to create 
a new environment for his mind in the old 
surroundings is to show him the way to solve 
his problem. A missionary once stood before a 
little shelf with fifteen or twenty great books. 
He was living in a land of the darkest and 
dreariest evil. As he looked at the books, 
which glowed with the best Christian living of 
twenty centuries, he cried, 'If I can keep these 
in my mind, paganism will never master my 
spirit.' But everybody needs it. The world 
gets to be too much for all of us, as well as too 
much with us. And the Christian ages are to 
be speaking to us all the while in the great books 
which have come forth warm with the vitality of 
the spirit of Jesus at work in the world." 

"You think that any man's environment 
may drag him down unless he meets it with 
an inner environment which is full of moral 
and spiritual power.^^" I asked. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 181 

"Just that," said my friend. "And nothing 
is mightier than a good book in providing this 
new inner environment." 

John rose and began to walk about the 
room. 

"Nothing amazes me more than the care- 
lessness of the churches in this matter," he 
said. "The old masters of the saddle-bags 
carried books about with them. They knew 
that if you can guide a man's reading, you 
can keep him steady and safe and strong. 
To-day we have no really serious attempt to 
bring the good book and the man who wants 
to be a good man together. If every man 
who is beginning the Christian life would read 
two great Christian books a month, we could 
transform America in a quarter of a century. 
If one Great Book is 'the sword of the Spirit,' 
there are no end of good books which have 
their own place as trusted weapons. Books 
form the air for the breathing of a man's mind. 
The man who lives in good books will come 
away from the books to lead a good life in 
the matters which are external. When a 
man's working hours are shortened the one 
important question has to do with how he 
spends his extra time. If a good part of it is 



182 THE OPINIONS OF 

given to noble books, all is well with the man, 
and as far as he goes with the man's land. 
It is the leaves of good books which may be 
said to bring about the healing of the nations." 

I looked at the shelves about me in the 
room which contained the real treasures of 
my friend. 

"If good books make a good man you have 
a good deal to live up to," I said. 

And then Clearfield closed the discussion 
with one sentence: 

"They have made me believe in the New 
Jerusalem coming down out of heaven," he 
said softly. 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 183 



THE PRACTICAL DREAMER 

" 'IV/rUSIC makers,' 'dreamers of dreams,'" 
JLt X repeated John Clearfield. He had 
just been repeating Arthur O'Shaughnessey's 
musical poem with a hearty rhythmic swing. 
We were having a day in the country, and 
our feet kept time to the beat of the verses 
as we walked along. Spring had very definitely 
made its appearance in the part of Wiscon- 
sin in which we had chosen to spend this 
day off. And the feeling of spring was in our 
blood. At length I turned to Clearfield with 
a question: 

"John, how have you ever kept your glowing 
idealism in the midst of your hard and de- 
manding career.? How do you keep the mood 
of a poet back of the mind of a lawyer?" 
John chuckled a little. Then he spoke : 
"O, the futility of some of these conceptions 
about the mind of a lawyer," he said with a 
sort of friendly scorn. 

"I keep up this sort of thing partly because 
I want to be a good lawyer," he went on. 
"Here is my recipe for a successful man at 



184 THE OPINIONS OF 

the bar: First a knowledge of law; second a 
knowledge of human nature; third, a quick 
mind, and fourth, a sensitive and sympathetic 
imagination. And one of the greatest of these 
is a sympathetic, well-developed imagination." 

A bird over our heads was throwing out a 
mad melody of gay notes as we passed along. 
We stopped for a moment to listen. 

"Then you would make hearing that bird's 
song and caring about it a part of your equip- 
ment as a lawyer," I inquired. 

The whimsical friendly idealist and the 
shrewd master of strategy fought for a minute 
in John's face. Then he said: 

"I surely would. As a matter of fact, if I 
can get that bird into the courtroom in a case 
I have next week I will win without a mo- 
ment's doubt. And I believe I can do it." 

I was at the moment remembering some of 
his extraordinary feats of this kind. 

"I know how you do it," I said, quickly. 
"The reason you succeed with this sort of 
thing when so many people fail, is because it 
is all real to you. If you happen to talk to a 
jury about the singing of a bird, there is al- 
ways a bird singing in your mind. So you 
make them hear it, too." 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 185 

"I am glad you realize," replied my friend, 
"that even in a court room sincerity is the 
best asset." 

We swung along for a little while drinking 
in the freshness and vigor of the day. There 
was plenty to see. There was plenty to feel. 
There was plenty to think about. And so the 
matter of talking was quite incidental. But 
after a while John took up the thread of the 
conversation where he had let it drop. 

"A good many people fail," said he, "because 
they do not know that you must have a poet 
at the heart of a business man if he is to make 
a great success. 

"I have known a good many men who were 
counted men of unusual success in practical 
affairs," he went on, "and every one of them 
had fastened the power of a practical man to 
the soul of a dreamer. This was what gave 
them their unusual power. There are dreamers 
without practical brain quality. And, of course, 
they fail. There are men with the tenacity 
of the effective practical mind. And they 
never do really big things. But the man who 
has captured a bird and kept it singing in his 
heart while his head worked like a mathe- 
matical machine is the man you have to watch. 



186 THE OPINIONS OF 

He was a practical dreamer. And he changes 
cities, and commonwealths, and influences the 
life of the nation. Or he builds up a business 
where nobody else would have seen any possi- 
bility of success." 

Once again our feet on the road made the 
only sound as we walked silently along. I 
could see that John was thinking. And I did 
not want to interrupt his thoughts. In a little 
while he was ready to go on: 

*T was just thinking of a man I knew once," 
he said. "He was a chap who sold all his 
dreams for the sake of what he thought would 
be a definite success. The queer thing about 
it was the ignominious way in which he failed. 
At last he carried about such an air of dis- 
illusioned cynicism that nobody would trust 
him. If he had kept his dreams, he might 
have become the head of a great business. 
He had a wonderfully keen mind, but he be- 
came incapable of that glowing and dreaming 
imagination which is one necessary element in 
the greatest success." 

Then John swung his arms as if dismissing 
something incidental and spoke with a cheery 
vigor: "But, after all, what a small place 
calculation has in one's real decisions! I 



JOHN CLEARFIELD 187 

would keep my dreams if it didn't help in my 
cases. Life is only as big as the range of your 
appreciation. In the long run the man is the 
most successful in his personal life who appre- 
ciates the most. And the man is the most 
successful socially who helps others to appre- 
ciate the most. One likes to play the game 
well. But there is something a good deal 
deeper than that. And this is the thing one 
finds in the place where he really lives. If 
one had to choose one would keep the dreams." 

"Men believe that about you," I replied. 
"And the interesting thing is that just because 
they do believe it they come to you all the 
more. Just the thing in you which some men 
would call impractical is the element back of 
some of your greatest successes." 

John smiled quietly. Then for a long time 
we walked through the spring sunshine in the 
country road busy with our thoughts. 



